Browse:Doctor Makes Medicine No. 876 (Volume 1, entries 968)
Doctor Makes Medicine No. 876
Volume 1, entries 968. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → FOLK MEDICINE → FOLK MEDICINE (1) PRINCIPLES OF HEALING. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 968
[Since doctor medicine or medical medicine is worthless in hoodoo
(pp.217-218), a doctor must make his own:]
About 1934 I was livin' at Mt. Olive [North Carolina] and I married a man up there and we married and stayed together around six months all right, and there was a woman, she claimed to be a friend of mine, she was likin' mah husband. And [after] about six months I went to feelin' bad - all stirred up in mah stomach - and the seventh month I remembah dey was something moving in my stomik like a baby. I suffered with that for quite awhile. I stayed sick a long time and nothin' couldn't seem to me no good. I went to a hospital. De doctor say I wasn't pregnant or nothin' - couldn't nothin' do me no good. Mah father-in-law went and got a doctor from Florence [South Carolina]. This doctor said that I had been - somebody had put a spell on me. He said if he couldn't get it out in less time than a year, that I would die. So this doctor stayed around and worked on me for quite awhile. He gave me some medicine. The numbers on that medicine was 876 [numbers backwards]. It was some black tonic.
[See Black draft, in Index.]
(Do you buy it in a drug store?)
No sir, you don't. It's a medicine he made.
(Was it in a bottle?)
Yes sir.
(Did he have a label pasted on the bottle?)
Yes sir. And so I took that medicine off and on three times a day before ev'ry meal. And in about - after I taken de medicine I was sick fer fo' months, then I began to feel better, gettin' up and walkin' around. And it seem like that feeling it went to goin' down in mah feet, to work workin' out mah body. And he rubbed me with some medicine called Do Easy, some white tonic - it wasn't licrice [liquid], but it was like a salve. [Notice the magic color change, black to white.]
(Did you buy it at the drug store or was it his own medicine?)
It was his own medicine he had.
(How did he spell that?)
D-U-E - I don't know exactly how that was spelled. But the name of it was Do Easy. And he rubbed mah knees wit dat medicine. And he say, told mah father [-in-law], he [the root doctor] say, "They's a root under the step." And he vent out there and dug under the step leg [post or stake holding up step], and there was in de bottle - about dat high, about dat long I mean [demonstrates].
(Six or seven inches long.)
Yes sir. And it was half-full of something white. I don't know what it was. And in there was something shape round like a root, and hairs on one end and clean on the other. And he say, "This is what cause zhoo to be sick." And he took that on back with him, he didn't leave it. And he said - I was sick then after he left fo' aroun' about three months, and then I got up and was walkin' all right. I came down here [to Wilmington] and lived. That was 1936 when I moved down here, last year round about May. And I took sick again. Well, I went - ev'ry time - it seem like ev'ry time in de night I go to baid I would seem like unrest- less. So it was a man stay roun' on Campbell Street, He say, "I know what's de matter wid choo." He say, "It something under your mattress. Well," he say, "it cos' aroun' fifteen dollahs to git rid of that." I said, "Well, I haven't got a penny now - will you wait on me?" He said, "I don't know." "Well, I'll send mah husband over dere and talk wit jeh." He went on in then an' got somepin from under mah mattress. It was flat - 'tween two mattress - it was flat, right on the side I laid on.] It was 'tween the two mattress wrapped up in a papah. And what dat was I don't know. I seen him when he took it out. I haven't been troubled wit mahself now since he took it from out de baid. [See George Jackson margin-title for an old-timer making, singing, his medicine.l