Page:Popular medicine, customs and superstitions of the Rio Grande, John G. Bourke, 1894.pdf/23

Rh adore the maguey, and the Opatas bow down before the giant cactus—"Adoraban la pitalla, fruta deliciosa de que tambien hacian un licor fuerte." (Father Alegre, "Historia de la Cia. de Jesus en Nueva España." Mexico: 1841. Vol. i. p. 307. Speaking of A.D. 1595.)

An anonymous writer in the "Evening Star," Washington, D. C., January 13, 1894, has an interesting article upon the use of Indian hemp and Jamestown weed by our southwestern tribes, and further remarks may be found in "On the Border with Crook," and in "The Medicine Men of the Apache," speaking of the medicine-men of the Hualpais.

Toothache.—Make a tea of the little lemon perfumed berries of the "colima."

Cures by Transference.—The Mexicans speak of certain diseases which they call "enfermedades trasbolicas," that is, diseases which can fly away from one patient to another. It is hard to tell what diseases come under this category, but slow fevers are generally included. The means taken to effect cures and the ideas underlying this system of necromantic therapeutics, are exactly what are to be found in the musty pages of Franz Paullini, Ettmuller, Beckherius, Flemming, Porta, Rosinus Lentilius, Schurig, and others of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which I cited in extenso in my work on "The Scatalogic Rites of all Nations." One example only will be given, from Starr County, Texas, in 1891.

When the patient is very low, take a black hen and half a pound of mustard; make a plaster of the mustard by using hot water; with this, smear the hen from head to foot, and then burn her alive in a bake-oven. (Mustard is probably only of recent use in this connection.) Meantime, a man who was baptized Juan for a first name furnishes the material for a plaster which must envelop the invalid's body for a change of the moon (eight days). At the expiration of that time, deposit the plaster in a hole dug at the intersection of two roads or streets (an old Roman idea). The plaster was to be covered with mud, and, if possible, a lock of the patient's hair should be added. If any stranger dig up this baleful package, the disease will leave the original sufferer and fly to ("trasvolar") the new victim. (M. A.)