Browse:Curin' People of Bad Diseases (Volume 1, entries 802)
Curin' People of Bad Diseases
Volume 1, entries 802. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → THE DOCTORS THEMSELVES: BIRTH TO DEATH: DESCRIBED BY LAYMEN. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 802
(Were you born down here and have you always lived right around here?)
In Mobile - all mah life been right chere - been heah 72 years. (Are there many professional people here - where you can go to get spell taken off? Are there as many now as there used to be?) Dere mo' heah now den dere evah was. (Do people believe more of it than they used to or are they sort of forgetting it?) No sir, dey worser now den dey evah was in mah life.
(How many white people go to these root doctors?)
Oh, ah don' know - pretty some - biggest majority of them goes.)
(The white people?)
Uh-hmm, they go, biggest majority of 'em, cause they believe in that; see, they goes sometimes tuh hold their servants down, all like that.
(To hold their servants down?)
An' pay yo' as little money as they can.
[Only time I ever heard this purpose!]
(Are the root doctor and the conjurer the same thing or are they different?)
Well, dere's a root doctor and den dere's some call deyself hoodoos and some call deyself sleight-of-hand workers; but when yo' come down tuh de whole thing, they all about the same thing. But a root doctor - now dere a whole lotta roots and things like that. Ah know - ah go out in de woods and get 'em.
(Well, the root doctor cures you of just ordinary sickness?)
Yes, sech as curin' people of bad disease, yo' know - now, ah know how to do dat. [So far as I know, informant was not a doctor. '667 - woman 72 - 50 years ago worked in whore-house in Mobile - very good" - Numbers Book 647-822.]