not ascertain, and tie up her head in a variety of dirty cloths, till it
was as large as her whole body. I removed all these, and found one side of
her face and neck very much swollen, but so begrimed with filth that it
was really no very agreeable task to examine it. The first process, of
course, was washing, which, however, appeared to her so very unusual an
operation, that I had to perform it for her myself. Sweet oil and
laudanum, and raw cotton, being then applied to her ear and neck, she
professed herself much relieved, but I believe in my heart that the warm
water sponging had done her more good than anything else. I was sorry not
to ascertain what leaves she had applied to her ear. These simple remedies
resorted to by savages, and people as ignorant, are generally approved by
experience, and sometimes condescendingly adopted by science. I remember
once, when Mr. ---- was suffering from a severe attack of inflammatory
rheumatism, Doctor C---- desired him to bind round his knee the leaves of
the tulip-tree--poplar, I believe you call it--saying that he had learnt
that remedy from the negroes in Virginia, and found it a most effectual
one. My next agreeable office in the Infirmary this morning was
superintending the washing of two little babies, whose mothers were
nursing them with quite as much ignorance as zeal. Having ordered a large
tub of water, I desired Rose to undress the little creatures and give them
a warm bath; the mothers looked on in unutterable dismay, and one of them,
just as her child was going to be put into the tub, threw into it all the
clothes she had just taken off it, as she said, to break the unusual shock
of the warm water. I immediately rescued them, not but what they were
quite as much in want of washing as the baby, but it appeared, upon
enquiry, that the woman had none others to dress the child in, when it
should have taken its bath; they were immediately wrung and hung by the
fire to dry, and the poor little patients having undergone this novel
operation were taken out and given to their mothers. Anything, however,
much more helpless and inefficient than these poor ignorant creatures you