APRIL 23.
In my medical capacity, like a true quack I sometimes perform cures so unexpected, that I stand like Katterfelto, “with my hair standing on end at my own wonders.” Last night, Alexander, the second governor, who has been seriously ill for some days, sent me word, that he was suffering cruelly from a pain in his head, and could get no sleep. I knew not how to relieve him; but having frequently observed a violent passion for perfumes in the house negroes, for want of something else I gave the doctoress some oil of lavender, and told her to rub two or three drops upon his nostrils. This morning, he told me that “to be sure what I had sent him was a grand medicine indeed,” for it had no sooner touched his nose than he felt some-thing cold run up to his forehead, over his head, and all the way down his neck to the back-bone; instantly, the headach left him, he fell fast asleep, nor had the pain returned in the morning. But I am afraid, that even this wonderful oil would fail of curing a complaint which was made to me a few days ago. A poor old creature, named Quasheba, made her appearance at my breakfast table, and told me, “that she was almost eighty, had been rather weakly for some time past, and somehow she did not feel as she was by any means right.”
“Had she seen the doctor? Did she want physic?”
“No, she had taken too much physic already, and the doctor would do her no good; she did not want to see the doctor.”
“But what then was her complaint?”
“Oh! she had no particular complaint; only she was old and weakly, and did not find herself by any means so well as she used to be, and so she came just to tell massa, and see what he could do to make her quite right again, that was all.” In short, she only wanted me to make her young again!