Stalin had a gut feeling about Mao, or how life presages art

A BBC News report put me, immediately, in mind of a book I read almost 35 years ago.

Mr Atamanenko says it was Stalin's henchman Lavrenti Beria who was put in charge of the secret laboratory.  

When I contacted Mr Atamanenko, he told me what the Soviet scientists had been looking for in faeces.  

"For example, if they detected high levels of amino acid Tryptophan," he explained, "they concluded that person was calm and approachable.  

"But a lack of potassium in poo was seen as a sign of a nervous disposition and someone with insomnia." 

Mr Atamanenko claims that in December 1949, Soviet spies used this system to evaluate the Chinese leader Mao Zedong who was on a visit to Moscow. They had allegedly installed special toilets for Mao, which were connected not to sewers, but to secret boxes. 

For 10 days Mao was plied with food and drink and his waste products whisked off for analysis. Once Mao's stools had been scrutinised and studied, Stalin reportedly poo poo-ed the idea of signing an agreement with him.

Here's a clip from The New York Times' 1982 review of The Rebel Angels, the last volume of Canadian author Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy:

There is even a former football star named Ozias Froats, who is now a research scientist at Toronto's fictional College of St. John and the Holy Ghost (fondly known as Spook), where Mr. Davies's story is set. Ozy Froats, and dozy doats And little Lambsie divy they used to sing of Ozias. Now he is about to win a Nobel Prize for his discovery that people can be typed and read according to their excrement. Maria Magdalena Theotoky thinks Ozie Froats may be a magus.