Browse:Mother Jones, Washington, D.C. (Volume 1, entries 2746)
Mother Jones, Washington, D.C.
Volume 1, entries 2746. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → SHRINES: ALTARS - CANDLES - SAINTS; NEW ORLEANS AREA → (1) ALTARS. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 2746
Well, the trouble I had - first, the misery started in the thigh, the left, and this moved around to the right; then, something came on up and stopped in my throat. It choked me a great deal. I was troubled with that for about eighteen months. I couldn't lay on neither side. I could only lay flat on my back for eighteen months. There wasn't a doctor in Fredericksburg that could do me any good. So I met a fellow from Washington, [D. C.] and he was telling me how it was with him. From his talk he had the same complaint I had. He talked it in me for to go to Washington and see an old lady. So finally I decided to go. He taken me up there for to see this woman. When I got there now, this woman she came to the window and she says to this man, "You got Jim O. [informant] with you." She'd never seen me before. She says to me, "I know what you come for." She says, "Come on in and look around. I haven't got time to do any readin' for you today [magic delay]." So she says to Henry M. [man who took him to Washing- ton], "Bring him back Friday. So he taken me back. When I walked in she says to me, she says, "You've got a snake in your belly." She says, "Take a seat over there," and commenced then to read. When she commenced to read she brought out several people - she brought their photographs out. She showed me these pictures - she named them, she knowed them [see later]. The old lady had a glass of water in her hand and she passed me this glass of water. So I drank this glass of water. Then after awhile she passed me another glass of water - so I drank that. She said she [some woman in Fredericksburg] gave me something in a glass of water, that's why she [doctor] gave me a glass of water. And right from that I commenced to feeling bad. So she says to me, "You got a snake in you - I can't draw it from you alive." I says to her, "No, I wouldn't like to see it." So she gave me a certain glass of medicine to pass that snake the other way. She gave me a treatment in the hair [scalp treatment], then she put me in a tub of something that was black. She gave me a good bath, and while she was bathing me a lot of smoke came out of my flesh, and right from that I commenced getting better. "You is all right now - you can go back home now and do anything you are big enough to do." And while I was there she showed me a lizard in a jar that she took out of a girl's throat. She had that setting on the shelf in alcohol. It looked just like a lizard you see crawling up a log. She told me she had drawn several snakes from different people. The snake pass from me after I left there - I never did see it. I finally got better. I only spent ten days with her - she charged me $12. John N., he was tricked the very same way, so he came to me and I was telling him about this woman. Then I got it for him to go up and see her. And she cured him the same way. Her name was Mother Jones. She came from North Carolina. [These pictures - she named them - she knew them - were a new device to me; an effective one, more so than the similar and impersonal device of a deck of photographs rather than of cards. These pictures were supposedly photographs of persons she had brought out while reading the cards. Informant could not have known any of them; he was not expected to identify any of them. Henry M., man who took informant to Washington, looks like a man out in the bushes beating up trade for Mother Jones. She could not have known Jim O's name without a letter from Fredericksburg or a telephone call after his arrival in Washington. Her words look around are a most important part of the atmosphere - she wanted him to see her medical museum (see in Index).]