Browse:Medical Medicine (Volume 1, entries 642–646)
Medical Medicine
Volume 1, entries 642–646. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → DOCTOR AND DOCTOR: TWO OPPOSING SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 642
Ah tell from experience that when ah was sick and that when ah've taken medical medicine it made me sicker. And after ah went to the doctor and ah went to the root doctor and he was treating me for hoodoo I commenced gettin' better. (I see.) When you are fixed, when you take medical medicine hit use'ly make you worser; prob'bly, if you continue with it, it will kill you. That's what it will do.
Entry 643
Your doctor medicine would natch'ly turn agains' yeh - it wouldn't do yo' no good. Ever'time de doctor would come and de more medicine you would take from 'im would make yo' more iller, see. And then after [afterward] yo' would either git more ill and if you did never change you would die. Then yo' find de medicine begin to git worse and worse on yo', why yo' have to change and git some herb doctor.
Entry 644
Take the toenail, fingernail, lock of the man's hair; parch it well and make a powder and put over his food. That'll make the man's ambition be for her prack'ly [practically] all the time. And in that length of time it will give him some ailment in the stomach and no physician in the United States can reach the sickness unless it is one that knows exactly what he has got. And [besides] it's outside the medical trade, you see. Over sixty-five percent of our men now by having those kind of women have bad stomachs - rusty stomachs from dat. [This could be the only time I heard the word physician in hoodoo. Rusty stomach, a boiler that becomes rusty, used only here.]
Entry 645
See, yo' kin take yore chamber lye - take dat chamber lye an' - person take hit to a red ants' bed. Yo' take it an' yo' po' it into somepin an' yo' takes some [corn] meal an' make it up as a dough, an' yo' take it to a red ants' bed an' yo' sprinkle it in dat red ants' bed, an' jest long as it in dat ants' bed, yo' see, dem antses will work dat dough up - up an' down dat-a-way. Well, dat'll create germ to work inside of a person, an' jest work, work, work, till it kills 'im. Well, yo' see de doctors don't know whut dat is. De doctors will be working on it fo' one thing, but still it's dat germ - de cunjuration. [For this germ theory, see No. 654.]
Entry 646
[Out of many persons speaking against doctor and his medicine (see Doctor, not Doctor, in Index) - one person, the only one, spoke favorably:] I know a woman right here in Northampton, she was sick and swoll up for at least eight years, and she accused her next door neighbor. This other woman told the whole general public she had never done nothing to her. She [the sick woman] went to Berkley and got a fortune teller. When she came back she found a bottle down under her door. This bottle was full of little snakes. Then she moved. And she began to take doctor's medicine and it wasn't long before she was on her feet again.