By profession a seller of needles, pins, buttons, and such small wares, she owed her livelihood, in reality, to payment for her medical skill. Not that she took money for her prescription or advice—“Thanks be to God,” she said, “I never took wan penny for curin’ man, woman, or child”; but then, no one ever asked her advice without buying something, and if her charges were just a little more than shop prices, she was entitled to something extra for bringing the shop to the customer. Then she got her meals from grateful and believing patients, and her basket had an uncommercial end, covered with a fair, white cloth, into which the good wife, with some show of doing good by stealth, introduced the useful wreck of a boiled fowl, or a ham-bone with broth possibilities.
She did not meddle with diseases of children, except in cases of measles, for which she prescribed whisky and sulphur, and a diet of sweet milk warm from the cow. Decline, she considered to be due to “a sappin’ o’ the constitution,” and she shared the old-time belief in the noxious effect of night air on consumptives, and would have them warm in curtained four-posters, in rooms into which little light and no fresh air could enter. Beyond a recommendation of port wine, she had no message for healing for these poor sufferers. Her strength lay in the treatment of adults’ ailments which do not necessarily kill. Her list of diseases was a short one. For the numerous forms of hepatic trouble known to the professional, she had one comprehensive title—
Liver Complent,
and for it one remedy, varied only in magnitude of dose. She recognised also as a common ailment—
Stomach Complent,
differentiating under this heading, Andygestion, Waterbrash, and Shuperfluity o’ phlegm on the stomach. She knew, too—
Bowel Complent,
Rheumatism,
Gineral Wakeness,
and
Harry Siplars.[1]
The foundation of her great reputation was, indeed, largely built on her celebrated cure of this last, in the case of Peggy Mulligan. She shall tell of it herself:—
“She come to me, an’ she ses, ‘Mary,’ ses she, ‘can ye cure me, for I’m heart-sick o’ them doctors at the dispinsary, an’ they’re not doin’ me wan pick o’ good.’ Ses I to her, ses I, ‘What did they give ye?’ ses I. ‘O the dear knows,’ ses she. ‘I haven’t tuk anythin’ they said, for I didn’t believe they would do me no good.’ An’ I had pity on the cratur, for her face was the size o’ a muckle pot, an’ lek nothin’ under the sun. Ses I to her, ses I, ‘I can cure you, my good woman, but ye’ll hev to do what you’re tould,’ ses I, ‘an’ I’ll make no saycret about it,’ ses I—‘it’s cow-dung and flour mixed, an’ ye’ll put it on your face, an’ lave it there for a fortnight,’ ses I, ‘an’ when ye’ll wash it off, ye’ll have no Harry Siplars.’ An’ nether she had.”