Browse:Darby's Fluid (Volume 1, entries 2468)
Darby's Fluid
Volume 1, entries 2468. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → BUSINESS AND CUSTOMERS. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 2468
Where people go in, you know, to see each other - bootlegging or some- thing like that. That what chew talking about? (That's right.) Business like that. Well, now this is something that is sold mostly in the South. Did you ever hear of Darby's fluid?
(What does it look like?)
It's blue - looks like garment blueing: It's something that is almost the same as, you might say, Zonite or - what is this other stuff we use, it's kind of like a disinfectant. You get this fluid - it looks like blueing but it's a fluid. Well, you mix a tablespoonful to a gallon of water. After you have mopped your floors, dey usually take about a quart of urine. Say now, if you dressed your house on a Monday and Fridays, you put a quart of this urine into this water. See. And you drop nine drops of oil of cinnamon in this water and when you dress your house you start at the door and never sweep out the door, because of the sill of the door coming in you see. Just get a mop just for that purpose and don't use it for anything else. Put a half cup of sugar in dis and get it well dissolved in this same water and you just mop your house from de front clean on back to the back. And when you have done that and it is well dried, you wanta be careful don't let anyone to come in your house before that time and you wanta do that before six clock in morning. At six 'clock you get de contents of a five-cent box of sulphur. Mix a teacup of sugar in dis sulphur and measure it out in exactly how many rooms you have. Say now, you might have five rooms or you might have seven. You divide this as near equal as possible with this sugar an' sulphur. You put it on a little tin pan. You don't have to buy a pan, you can get the top of a tin bucket of some kind - just since it's clear and bright. An' put a little of that ~ jest the same as you would a candle - stick it together an' let that burn, an' don't open your house up until this have burned. Befo' three hours time your house will be so crowded you can't hardly stay in it your- self. Now, that is a fact, too.
(You make as many piles as you have rooms.)
That's right. Now that is one thing I can substantiate. I tell you how I know about that. [During a pause she told me she had formerly lived in Cincinnati. I said I also had once lived there.] I used to live right down from Mound Street across from dat undertaker - had dat big house at 714 and times were very good at that time and people were paying pretty good money for rent. But it seems that - I had nice rooms and all, but it was just so hard for me to get people to come in and pay me. They would come in and pay the first, or they would come in and give me half of it and say, "Well, I'm sorry but I haven't got it all." Well, ah wouldn't want to put them out, you know. So I was telling a friend of mine about it. She said, "Well, I will come down and see what I kin do for you." She came down and fixed my house up like that - burned de stuff in de house, and she told me to do that every Monday and Friday. After that I just had so much trade. I tried it several times since then in different places and I found it to be true. It will absolutely do that - I found it to be a fact.