Browse:Westward (Volume 1, entries 1075)
Westward
Volume 1, entries 1075. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → FOLK MEDICINE → FOLK MEDICINE (1) PRINCIPLES OF HEALING. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 1075
You start that - it's on his elbow [I mean] down here to his ankle. It start down there in the morning and at twelve o'clock it's middleway of his leg, of his ankle and his knee [at noon between ankle and knee], and in the evening at six o'clock it's at his knee. Well, it stays there then and all night he cain't rest and that morning it goes back in the center [between ankle and knee]. Then around at dinnertime [noon] it goes back down to his ankle, but it makes it back up here to his knee before night. [See subdivision Time and Hoodoo Spell, p.349; also Time in Index.] You take Jimson weed and make it into a water [tea] - put 'em on and boil 'em, the leaves. And you set that stuff in the tub or the basin and bath it [leg] the way the sun sets thataway, and when you did that and get through with it - you bath it about twice or three times a week the way the sun sets - then, when you gets through, you takes the water and throw it in the same direction. Well, when it go down here to the middleway of his leg [between knee and ankle] it'll stop, it won't make it back to his knee. Then, about the fourth or fifth day it will be at his ankle. It won't get no further and it will come back to the middle of his laig. Well, you goin' to continue to do that until it go complete out and he won't feel the misery of it atall. And that'll stop it - that'll cure that. [An example of downward bathing rite - see p.369f.l
(Well, how did he get that - get that thing in his leg?)
That by the distance where he goes along walking. That started that misery in his laig.
(And this just cures it?)
And that just cures it.