Browse:Ole Leana Davis, called Mammy Doctor (Volume 1, entries 3085)
Ole Leana Davis, called Mammy Doctor
Volume 1, entries 3085. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → MORE DOCTORS DESCRIBED BY LAYMEN. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 3085
This man I married - oh, it was forty some years, forty-five or near fifty years ago now [happened about 1887]. He was taken sick and his mother said somebody had poisoned him. And this old woman [ole Leana Davis, called Mammy Doctor, well-known in Richmond years ago], whut waited [doctored] on him, come to see him, cut off getting de [medical] doctor's medicine. [This was standard practice to "cut off" the M.D.'s medicine, which was considered useless and harmful in witchcraft and hoodoo.] She went and got a he bullfrog and said she was goin' bury him at the center of the door and whoever did it was goin' come back and ask her what was de matter. Well, she got dis he bullfrog and put him in dis cup [top from a], baking-powder box [can], and made an oath and filled it full of five cents worth of new cayenne pepper. And he [bullfrog] bellowed like a bull. This ole cunjure woman put it under the sill of the door, right down in de corner here - and the house there today and that cup is down there now, I reckon - the door where he was livin' at, under the steps. And ev'ry mornin' for nine days his mother had to go there and stomp on de steps and say she hoped to God she'd get 'em. But this boy died. He died. And the frog still there - calculate it still there now, I reckon.