Many rationalists laugh thinking that Prophet Muhammad was an idiot because he just used folklore to treat some people by telling them to drink camel urine. How can urine, which is so repugnant, repulsive and stinky, be suggested as a therapy by the Prophet? Mind you, the Prophet was not the first one to suggest it because Arab bedouins had been drinking camel urine since antiquity for medical purposes. The hadith which mentions this story goes as this: it says that some people came to Madeenah and fell sick. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) told them to drink the milk and urine of camels, and they recovered and grew fat. In the story it also says that they apostatized and killed the camel-herder, then the Muslims caught them and executed them. Narrated by al-Bukhaari (2855) and Muslim (1671).

Now, the Prophet was not a scientist. He did not carry out double-blind experiments to determine the efficacy of camel urine. He merely followed the traditions prevalent in Arabia. But why did not he reject this specific camel urine drinking tradition while he rejected other local Arabic traditions as non-sensical? For example the one where eclipse occurred on the death of Prophet’s son and people suggested that even the universe was mourning while the Prophet classified this tradition as wrong. Hence, three possibilities remain for the suggestion of using camel urine as therapy by the Prophet:
1- He did not know anything else to do regarding their treatment so he just suggested whatever he knew from the folklore that people thought worked for them.
2- He divinely knew the benefits in this tradition and stuck to it.
3- Just a coincidence that the tradition which the Prophet did not reject and found beneficial turned out to be scientifically correct in the 20th century.

1 is a stupid argument because then how did Prophet know about the irrationality of other traditions such as the eclipse occurring on someone’s death?
3 is also an illogical argument since coincidences do not occur again and again. There are many other instances where Prophet said something and in today’s world it turns out to be scientifically correct. For example Quran says that Allah (swt) turned some Jews into monkeys and pigs. Some companion asked the Prophet that the monkeys and pigs that we see today, are they the descendants of those Jews-turned-pigs-and-monkeys? The Prophet pbuh said no and also explained that monkeys and pigs were present way before those Jews were turned into pigs and monkeys as a punishment. This turns out to be scientifically and historically correct. Multiple coincidences with extremely low individual probabilities have an even extremely low probability of independently occurring together.
2 seems to be the correct conclusion. Why? Because,

Since antiquity the tribes in the Asian deserts have used camel urine and milk for several illnesses. These natural products in their crude form are used in the treatment of stomach infections, tuberculosis and cancer (Gauthier-Pilters and• Corresponding author. Dagg, 1981; Kabarity et al., 1988). The chemical composition of camel urine showed the presence of purine bases, hypoxanthine, sodium, potassium, creatinine, urea, uric acid and phosphates (Mura et al., 1986, 1987).

In view of the cytotoxic, mutagenic, antioxidative and antimutagenic nature of ingredients present in camel urine and its folklore use in cancer therapy, we studied the effect of camel urine treatment on the cytological and biochemical changes induced by a known mutagenic and cytotoxic drug, cyclophosphamide (Oleinik, 1985; 1986; AI-Bekairi et al., 199Ia).

The results obtained in the present study clearly revealed that the camel urine significantly reduced the PCE/NCE ratio, indicating its cytotoxic potential. These results are supported by the inhibition of nucleic acids and glutathione levelsand increase of malondialdehyde contents in the same animals. The mitodepressive and biochemical changes observed in the present study are attributed to the cytotoxic ingredients present in camel urine (Mura et al., 1986, 1987).

Our results are in agreement with those obtained by Kabarity et al. (1988), who showed camel urine to be mitodepressive but not clastogenic. Despite the presence of a number of mutagenic ingredients such as purine bases, urea derivatives and hypoxanthine (Peterson and Peterson,
1979; Emerit et a\., 1985; Bonatti et a\., 1986; Cole et a\., 1991; Moore et al., 1991; Nagao et al.,
1991; Matsuda et al., 1991; Liber and Denault, 1991; Asita et al., 1992;Wood et al., 1992; Basu et al., 1993; Gruz et al., 1993; Shcherbakova and Pavlov, 1993)the camel urine was not found to be
clastogenic. The non-clastogenic nature observed in the present study appears to be due to the effect of antioxidative and antimutagenic components of camel urine such as creatinine and uric acid (Ames et al., 1981; Glazer, 1988; Al-Bekairi et al., 1991a, 199Ib)

Our results demonstrate the cytotoxic and non-mutagenic nature of camel urine and support its folkloric claims. Further studies are in progress to explore the cytotoxic activity of camel urine and its active constituents in cancer cells.

Source: Journal of Ethnopharmacology 52 (1996) 129-137

Another source which shows the benefit of camel milk in Type I Diabetes is Mohamad et al., 2009 published in issue 2 in volume 12 of Journal of Medicinal Food.