Browse:Ratsbone (Volume 1, entries 1432)
Ratsbone
Volume 1, entries 1432. 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 1432
I hear'd ole man settin' down tellin' dis - said dat she [an old woman] got anothah ole woman [root doctor] to doctor on 'er. She said dat she had a - she had sweated 'er. She said she had a somepin up 'er liver in 'er skin. It crawled all over. She fis' feel it crawlin' undah de skin. [For a live terrapin hanging on to a person's liver, see No. 10, p.7.] An' dis woman tol' der dat she wus hurt - she said she wus tricked. She goes an' git some ratban [ratsbane] roots, an' git a he ratban root - git some of dem - an' a she ratban root. A he is got streaks up it, white streaks on de leaf; an' de she is jis' a solid small green leaf. She boils a tea out of it separate, an' take de she ratban-root tea, give all of dat; an' jis' a half of de he. An' dat cured it. [It is quite likely that had the patient been a man, the doctor would have prescribed all the he tea and half the she tea. All of one and half of the other is a diminishing amount rite.] [The plant here is not the ratsbane of European witchcraft but an American substitute. Its identity? What a botanist and a root doctor who digs her own roots call ratsbane can be different things. Besides, she is surely using two separate plants; the one with "white streaks on de leaf," the other "jis' a solid small green leaf." The former, the "he ratban root," appears to be either the rattlesnake plantain (Peramium pubescene), an orchid with checked or mottled leaves supposed to resemble rattlesnake hide, or spotted wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) with white-mottled leaves. The latter, the "she ratban root' - as a sheer guess I would say it was a. plant growing in the vicinity of the "he."]
[Baltimore, Md., (153), 62: l+85; this cure in Charlotte Co., Va.]