Page:Popular medicine, customs and superstitions of the Rio Grande, John G. Bourke, 1894.pdf/24

142 Diseases of Urinary Organs, Bladder, and Kidneys. Take some of the Monterey soap (made of hog's lard and native soda), make it into a thin lather; leave it out all night in the moonlight; in the morning, add sugar to sweeten, and give to patient. After that, let him take a tablespoonful of syrup made from Yerba Gonzalez—one before each meal. (M. A.)

Warts.—To cure a wart ("mezquino"), wait till you see a rainbow in the sky; then tie a hair around the wart, and as the rainbow disappears, so will the wart. (Federico Rodriguez.)

Weather Signs.—When an ox licks his forefoot, kicks out violently and repeatedly with his hind feet, or runs about uneasily, it is a sure sign that a storm is coming.

When the winged ants come out of the ant-hills, look out for heavy showers. They come out to escape; the wingless ants which remain in the hill are drowned.

Whenever a sand-storm or a cyclone occurs in the valley of the Rio Grande, the people out in the fields or travelling along the roads stop and pick up a handful of dust, which they throw up in the air. First Sergeant James T. Murphy, Troop "C," Third Cavalry, United States Army. This practice is of Indian derivation.

Witchcraft.—Maria Antonia was emphatic in her expression of belief that there were lots of "brujas" (witches) around, who took delight in doing harm to you personally, or in spreading sickness among your cattle, blighting your crops, or ruining your fruit-trees.

Everybody believed in witches; there might be some fool "Americanos" who would say they did not, but she was sure that they were only talking for talk's sake. However, what the "Americanos" did concerned her but little. She had been told that many "Americanos" were not "Christianos." She wouldn't talk to a man who was so wickedly stupid that he refused to believe what every one of good sense knew to be so." "Don't you believe in 'brujas,' mi capitan? "Why, surely, comadrecita,—do you not see that I am different from those fool Gringos who come down here pretending to know more than their grandparents did? What I am anxious to learn is, what is the cure, or the best preventive, so that I may run no danger of being 'maleficiado' myself."

The best remedy, Maria Antonia said, was to offer to San Antonio, or other powerful patron who works miracles in that particular line, a "milagro" of silver made in the form of the limb of the live stock or the fruit-tree which had been bewitched. She had never known that to fail, but then there were other remedies, too, which I might as well learn.

"Saint Anthony protects his friends from many troubles, but specially from witchcraft." Charles G. Leland, "Roman Etruscan Remains," page 240.