Browse:Sweat Diagnosis (Volume 1, entries 632–633)
Sweat Diagnosis
Volume 1, entries 632–633. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → DIAGNOSIS. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 632
This fellow [root doctor] you're going to see now, said my brother-in- law was hurt - he gave him a root to put in his hand and hold it right tight, and when he opened his hand his hand was sweated, and he said, "You're hurt." He got some mullein roots, pine tops, cedar berries and put them in a pot and a pint of water and kept adding to it as it boiled down [magic rite of increasing amount]. He put in a ten-cent piece and boiled it with it. "Now," he said, "you take that drink and you'll get well." He never got well. What really was his trouble, he had bladder trouble inwardly. He couldn't urine because something went right to the tube of his bladder and stopped it and caused agony all over his system. When he would go to make water his feet would dance up and down on the floor, just like that. This fellow was working on him but he was never able to cure him. His father Was good [a good root doctor] but he's dead. He [the so-called root doctor I was going to see] don't know anything about it. They had to operate on him [the brother-in-law]. The root they principally use is called the black pip- pip-away[?]. They take that root and hold it in their hand and the hand would sweat. That's an evidence something has effected you, somebody has done some- thing to you. If your hand didn't sweat, you wasn't effected then. It looks more like a piece of snakeroot than anything else.
Entry 633
[Doctor J. D. Buzzard of Norfolk (see Index), whom I interviewed, has patient hold a magic crystal in the palm of his hand; if the hand sweats, he has been tricked. The Crystal Ball rite previously given in this subsection is some- thing quite different. Norfolk, Va., (464), 453: l; original text misplaced or lost.]