The Wise Woman
From “A Boy in the Country.”
By John Stevenson.
That she knew far more than all the doctors put together was commonly considered, in the territory of her operations, as truth beyond question. Sometimes a man body, with a pain for which he could not account, fearing the inquisition and expense of the qualified practitioner, would make believe to doubt the potency of her medicines, the reality of her cures. But even the discernment of a boy was sufficient to detect the insincerity of his contemptuous talk about “auld wife’s doctorin’,” and to find lurking behind his brave words the strong desire to consult the wise woman. With much show of impatience, and pretence of anger, at the over-persuasion of his womankind, he would give a seemingly reluctant consent to see Mrs. Moloney, “if she should happen to look in.” He knew as well as that he lived that her coming would be by invitation.
Such a one, receiving in the field the message that “Mrs. Moloney’s in,” would probably say, “Hoots, nonsense,” and add that he had his work to look after. But, very soon, he would find that he needed a spade or a hook, a pot of paint, or a bit of rope, from home, and he must needs go home for it himself. He believed in a man’s doing a thing for himself if he wanted it well done; as like as not a messenger would spend half a day in looking for what he wanted, and bring the wrong thing in the end. At home he would make a fine show of searching out-houses and lofts, passing and repassing, with some noise, the kitchen windows, finally looking in to see if the thing is in the kitchen; and there, of course, quite accidentally, he would see Mrs. Moloney and would not be rude enough to leave without passing the time o’ day. Then the womankind took hold of the case, drew out the man’s story of distress, took notes of the remedy, and saw to it that the medicine was taken according to direction.
“The innards o’ man is tough, and need to be dealt with accordin’,” said Mrs. Moloney, and for man she prescribed a dose which gave him some pain and, usually, cured him. It may be that Nature, provoked by the irritant remedy, got rid of it, and the ailment at once; or it may be that the man body, after the racket in “his innards,” found his ailment, by comparison, easy to live with, and imagined himself cured. In either case, the result was counted as cure to the credit of Mrs. Moloney.
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—