The “norther” found me ill with a periodical return of my Louisiana malarial, and brought me a cold of the severest kind. It blew through the cracks and crannies of the barracks, through my blankets and through me. I felt as though my blood had ceased to circulate and I should never be warm again.
“Try some of Mr. Fowler’s sumach,” suggested some one; “it cured my cold.”
“I have tried everything,” I said, “and find the only thing is prevention—nothing cures these colds with me when they have come.”
“And I never got any help from medicine,” said my friend. “But this stuff of Fowler’s cured mine in a night. I never knew any thing like it.”
I went to Mr. Fowler and got the sumach berries. A cluster or two thrown in a quart mug of boiling water made the remedy. It was fearfully acid, and it took fearful quantities of sugar to make it palatable, but it then had quite a pleasant taste and worked (let me say for the benefit of the victims of violent catarrh) a miraculous cure.
I had not paid much attention to the Acting Master’s simples, having no great faith in medicine and less in herbs—but this with the dread of another bilious attack aroused me so far that I walked round the barracks and asked after the livers of all the patients who had been treated with his wild peach bark. These livers were found to be in a highly improved condition, and thinking it fair that mine should have a share in all the medical advantages afforded by a residence in Texas, I determined to treat it also to wild peach bark.
The “norther” broke on the second day, and in the after noon the weather was much like the last part of one of our cold nor’-easters. The rain had ceased, but the clouds floated gloomily overhead and the wind blew coldly from the north.
“Come, Stratford,” I said, “I am a convert to the Fowler treatment, and shall feel the better for a little exercise. Let us go out and get some bark.”
“Oh, it’s too cold and the ground will be muddy; you had better wait till to-morrow; it will be fine weather then.”
“No, no, to-morrow you will be at work on the chimney, and this is a broken day; let us go now.”