Page:Popular medicine, customs and superstitions of the Rio Grande, John G. Bourke, 1894.pdf/5

Rh Diseases of Urinary Organs, Bladder, and Kidneys (Blennorhagia).—Make a decoction of colazmecate; put it to cool in the light of the moon, sweeten with sugar. Take a cupful, fasting daily, for nine days. (M. A.)

(Colazmecate is a squatty plant, with fine thorns, much like a rosebush.)

To bring Milk to the Breasts of Women, or to expand breasts not fully developed.—Drink twice daily an "atole," or gruel, made out of powdered and toasted mulberry twigs. (M. A.)

To cure Consumption.—Take a black cat, kill it, and extract all the bones; rub the consumptive with the flesh from head to foot, and let him drink the cat's blood mixed with warm water. (M. A.)

The analogue of this notion can be traced in the far East.

It is believed by Chinamen that cat's meat is a remedy for lung diseases. It is served in most of the Canton restaurants cooked in various ways.

Maria Antonia had a pronounced dislike for Captain Pilcher, our post surgeon. It was no doubt a strictly professional antipathy due to loss of patronage, but it manifested itself on every occasion. "There! Look! I have told you how to cure consumption. Can that little doctor do that? Valgame Dios!"

Now the term "little," as applied to my friend Pilcher by Maria Antonia and myself, could in no sense be translated as small, Pilcher being one of the most heavily built men in the army; it simply expressed our contempt for his ignorance of witchcraft, moon-medicine, milagros, love-philters, and such important matters in the medical curriculum, and I am sorry to have to confess that when I saw that the key to Maria Antonia's good will lay in an abuse of Pilcher, I said several things not exactly complimentary.

"Know how to cure consumption! Why, my dear little friend, I assure you that he has never heard of your remedies! I do not believe he could keep witches out of this house if he were to try for a week. That's the reason why I have sent for you. I believe that you know more about witchcraft than DeWitt and Pilcher put together. And as for the best method of using black cats, they don't know as much as your little boy. Caramba! I have no use for such people!"

Cosmetics.—If a young lady wants to have a soft skin, and a clear ruddy complexion, she must wait till the eve of St. John's Day, and then rub the face with a piece of the umbilical cord of a young male child, and she'll have a ruddy complexion, if the moon be full at the time, and she have previously washed her face with a soap made of fresh hog's lard and "teguezquite," a kind of soap used in Monterey. (M. A.)