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Show THE VILLAGE DOCTOR, j The Time When Everybody Practiced Medicine. PATIENTS WARNED 1GAINST COLO WJTEB A Paucity of Ailments. Calomel and Jalap. Sweating it out. - If one could disentangle himself from the telegraph wires of today, pet the shriek of the. locomotive out of (lis ears and then Lake a hack w&rd leap into old plantation times he would be mightily amused. Among the objects ob-jects or interest would be the pantry of the great house, where the housewife kept her stores. if he peervd curiously about be would see & certain rather retired shelf on which would be bunches of herbs and roots, also bottles of decoctions made thereof. These were the household remedies, formula copyrighted by tradition, proprietary to the family. Ln the country, wbere the doctor's bailiwick wiu. of extended area and where drug stores were uon -existent, everybody was to a large extent his own doctor. As a consequence he wanted to be everybody else's doctor, while everybody else yearned to be hid. A PACCITT Of AlIJtENTS. j Alas! Our reiertoire of illnesses was lim- j ited. indeed, compai ed with today. There j was a paucity of available diseases. A man ! could not possibly have cerebro spinal men-: ingitis; it was not to be had. If be had a ; puiu in his chest no one soothed his anguish : by telliug him be had pneumonia. The word t pleurisy was remorselessly tlung at him. ; Diphtheria was uncountable; putrid sore throat filled that vacuum in the list. If a i man was wheezy and had trouble with his 1 breathing the rugged word phthisic waa nailed to him; no one dreamed of bronchitis. Bright's disease had not been iuveuted in our regiou, and people's hearts never troubled them save when iu love. Hence old time j people, when they came to die, had a contracted con-tracted listof ailments from which to choose, and they died as they lived, plain and unro- j man tic. i When the amateur doctors of the eommn- nity desired assistance then the village doc- tor was culled in, and he conllned himself to; two remedies calomel and jalap adminis- j tered by the shovelful. There must have been a fall in the price of these drugs when i the last of these doctors died. If a man i Bprained bis ankle, was bitten by a mad dog or had a sick headache he was told to toko calomel or jalap; if ho refused and died, it served him right. If be took them and died, it was evidence that no human power could suve him. Castor oil and paregoric sometimes some-times appeared, but they were dwarfs compared com-pared to calomel and jalap. The only rem-1 edies feared were the private remedies of the ; peopla The moment an old woman thought , Bhe could make a valuable medicine out of ! some herb or herbs, she burned to adminis tor ; it to Borne suil'ei ing neighbor. The good Samaritau, Mrs. Perkins, often walked miles to urge the use of snake root tea in the measles to bring the disease rapidly to the surface. An old uegro, Aunt Kitty, made a salve for sores that was very famous. Its principal constituent was duck's fat, but the fowl must be killed at a certain phase of the moon aud the fat melted over a fire kindled with certain sorts of wood. As this salve was said to work miraculous cures, it may be a loss to humanity that the astronomical astro-nomical and botanical secrets of ita , manufacture manu-facture were not perpetuated. SWEATING OUT DISEASE. There was a multiplicity of remedies for colds, and' they generally were based on sweating out the disease. Boneset tea, tea of wild cherry bark, onions stewed with sugar, and vinegar and molasses all had thBir warm advocates, but a highly esteemed remedy was a Thomsonian mixture bearing the rather indefinite name of "Composition." There was nothing undefined about its taste or effect, however. It was of an ardent, impulsive im-pulsive nature. It burned the tongue when flj-st tasted, then it charred the windpipe ana l liver as it went down, aud finished by par- boiling the soles of the feet. Its forte was 1 i causing a sweating, and it did its duty to the j letter. It brought tho cold out, and it 1 brought the original sin out, and the heart's . sn -re is out. lot.hing that could be moved1 i rested beneath the cuticule after a composi-1 composi-1 tion seance. 1 One old idea of the doctore has greatly changed the objection to their patients drinking water. No matter how much the invalid craved it be was told that even a moderate indulgence would be fatal and the, attendants were solemnly warned to turn a' deaf ear to bis entreaties. At the tender age of ten years I aimed the first blow at the anti-water regime, aud it happened in this manner: I was visiting on a plantation and the planter's father, a man of advanced yeara, was at death's door, owing to a protracted pro-tracted case of dysentery. Day by day the old man drew nearer to the grave, and the family awaited the coming of the destroyer with sad hearts. The one desire of the dying man was a draught of cold water from one of tbo sparkling springs which abounded on the farm. No traveler, sand blinded and thirst stricken in the arid desert, could have cried more piteously or more unavaitiugly, for the doctor had declared a draught of water fatal to the sick man, and bad sternly commanded the family to refuse his requests. One morning 1 was in bis room, for he dearly loved children, and ho begged me to stealthily stealth-ily fetch bim a pitcher of water from the spring. I hesitated, for while no one bad forbidden me to give bim water, I knew the family refused it to bim. Thou the old man asked me to bring bim his watch from off the table. 1 did so, nnd be told me I should haveit if 1 would bring bim a pitcher of water. The watch was of silver, as large as a small saucer, and I longed to possess such a treasure- 1 brought the water. At times 1 try to think humanity made me bring it, but then 1 think of tbo watch and doubt. The old man swallowed the pitcher's contents con-tents at a draught and died ten years after, of old age, and I have the watch yet. "J, C. P." in Philadelphia Times. |