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He wondered, too, whether she ever went out now, as she was accustomed to do when at home, among the cottagers in the neighbourhood, with a basket of food and simples, and distributed them to the sick and needy with gentle words, which won their hearts, or whether when mendicants came to the gate she stopped and listened to their tales of suffering, relieved them when she could, and seldom failed to drop a tear of sympathy for their griefs, which went like balm to the hearts of many.
Ephraim found dry punk in a rotten log, and firing it with the flint and steel of a great king's musket one of his reavings from the enemy soon had a pine-knot torch for her. She gave it to the Catawba to hold; and while she was cooing over her patient and binding up his burns in some simples gathered near at hand by the Indian, I had the story of the double rescue from the old hunter.
"My old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties of simples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim the medical degree. Here, woman! The child is yours she is none of mine neither will she recognise my voice or aspect as a father's. Administer this draught, therefore, with thine own hand."
I had seen him before, and had found in his very small, mean figure clad all in black, and his narrow face with malignant eyes, and thin white lips drawn tightly over gleaming teeth, something infinitely repulsive, sickening to the sight as are certain reptiles to the touch. "There are no simples or herbs of grace to be found amongst reeds and half-drowned willows," I said.
Yet this defect they may supply by lessening the number of ingredients, and may perform more with 2, or 3 Simples, then with the larger Compositions, as 'tis manifest in the use of Galbanum alone, now used and found better then Emplastrum Hystericum, consisting of 21 ingredients.
Her qualifications as white witch were boundless cunning, equally boundless good nature, considerable knowledge of human weaknesses, some mesmeric power, some skill in "yarbs," as she called her simples, a firm faith in the virtue of her own incantations, and the faculty of holding her tongue.
The Czar showed the same affection and the same attentions to the King as before; and his visit was not longer than the one he had received, but the crowd much surprised him. He had been at eight o'clock in the morning to see the Place Royal, the Place des Victoires, and the Place de Vendome, and the next day he went to the Observatoire, the Gobelins, and the King's Garden of Simples.
He had declared that the sufferer needed nothing more than common treatment; and to this the skill of a score of aged women in this district, furnished with simples culled from the forest, and pointed out, of old time, by Indian leeches, was no less adequate than that of Sarsefield.
He gathered simples in the fields, and parcels and bottles came and went between him and learned doctors in Boston; but report went around that it was not drugs alone that he worked with, nor medicines for passing ailments that he distilled.
The great mistake of our doctors in India is dosing their patients with calomel, which, although necessary in some cases, where it is the only medicine powerful enough to arrest the rapid strides with which disease advances in tropical countries, is too often had recourse to, when simples would be just as effective.
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