Browse:Fish Brine (Volume 1, entries 1259–1261)
Fish Brine
Volume 1, entries 1259–1261. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → FOLK MEDICINE → CURE AND PROTECTION. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 1259
[We have already heard two persons tell the same story, neither knowing the other had told it (see Nos.73-74, Pp.30-31.) Here a story is told first by the husband at my hotel in town and then he, my contact man Carter and I drove nine miles out into the country to interview his parents, others, and wife. The latter unaware of what her husband had said, retold the story:] [Husband's story about wife:] My wife, not knowing she had created any enemies, woke early one morning and started to enter the kitchen. The door being closed she got to the door and could not touch it. She could only stand and scream. What she thought, what she seen, what she felt, nobody knew. We got my mother. She asked me did we have a salt fish. I did not. I went to the store and secured two. She taken these salt fish and crumbled them in water and washed her hands, and she could enter the door.
Entry 1260
[Wife's story about herself:]
One morning I got up and I started to cry. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I went out in the yard and came in the house and didn't have any mind what- ever. I was as crazy as a bedbug. I didn't even know my own children. I broke down and all I could cry was, "I can't touch the door." Every time I went near the door I could see snakes and everything. A lady came in and said, Take some salt fish, urinate, and take that and wipe the door knob off, wipe the doorsill." And I did that, and the next morning I was all right. [For similar experiences see Arrestation and Paralysis, Nos. 749-753, Pp.251-254, and Index.] [Nine miles from Fredericksburg, Va., (69?), written by hand or by hand-cranked Ediphone.]
Entry 1261
Yo' kin take a person's hair as dey comb it out chew see - git dandruff and all and wrap dat hair right tight. Yo' know people combin' dere hair it come out in de comb, an: yo' jis' take dat hair an' wrap it real tight in some red flannel wit a piece of lodestone, an' stick needles all through it. Jis' stick 'em all through dem - Jis' diff'rent ways an' dose needles will inflict de body some way. Yo'll break out in spots de size of quarters or half dollahs on yore laig or on yore body. An' yo'll always be afflicted until somebody in de family finds that thing. Ah'm telling dis from experience. Mah mothah wus hurt dat way an' ah found it when ah wus thirteen yeahs old. An' den she bathe her laig in fish brine an' she got well.