Page:Popular medicine, customs and superstitions of the Rio Grande, John G. Bourke, 1894.pdf/22

140 excrement of a black cow. It will cure promptly, even if the scab have lasted seven years. (M. A.)

To cure Snake Bite.—Take the root of the huaco (which bears a small blue flower), mash and pour on it enough mescal to cover. Drink as much as you can, and also apply locally as a lotion.

(I am inclined to attribute a pre-Columbian origin to this. The huaco was very highly considered by many of the tribes of New Spain, and until lately there was a "Flor de Huaco" gens in one of the pueblos of New Mexico near head of the Rio Grande.)

Lieutenant Joseph T. Dickman, Third Cavalry, United States Army, furnishes me with the cure by the huaco more in detail. He tells me that the belief is that half a dozen bulbs of the plant put in a flask of whiskey or mescal will, with one drink daily, afford immunity from the bite of the rattlesnake. The bruised bulb should be applied to the wound, after the usual steps of cutting and sucking have been completed; but, in this case, none of the medicine is to be taken internally.

To cure all Insect Bites.—Apply a lotion of the leaves and flowers of the "Escobilla de Castilla" (a low, stunted bush, with yellow flowers).

Kill a chicken and apply the hot entrails as a poultice to the wound. (Major Louis Morris, Third U. S. Cavalry.)

To relieve a Stiff Neck.—Mexican women, of the more ignorant sort, are accustomed to tie around their necks the drawers of a man named Juan, and, conversely, for the same ailment, men make use of the petticoat of a woman named Juana. (Señor Arguelles, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.)

Leland describes an Italian charm: "When a woman has a sore throat she must take her own apron and measure or fold it in a cross thrice for three mornings in succession." (After which it is to be presumed she wears it.) "Roman Etruscan Remains," page 367.

To care the Sting of a Bee.—Apply a plaster of mud or cow-dung.

Toloachi is stramonium, or Jamestown weed. Has been used by medicine-men of the Hualpais to produce visions and induce prophecy.

The Mexican women put it in potions to be drunk by recreant lovers. It is said to produce dementia lasting for twelve months. (See "Mariguan.")

Italian witches still administer "certain poisons, such as stramonium, which causes strange delusions." Charles G. Leland, "Roman Etruscan Remains, page 208.

The superstition—half fear, half veneration—surrounding such plants as the mariguan, the toloachi, the drago, and the coyotillo is the residuum of a much larger plant-worship, which made the Aztecs