354 lawson's history 



as mercury does ; yet they use sweating and de- 

 coctions very mucli with it, as they do almost on 

 every occasion ; and when they are thoroughly 

 heated, they leap into the river. The pox is fre- 

 quent in some of these nations ; amongst which I 

 knew one woman die of it ; and they could not, 

 or would not, cure her. Before she died she was 

 worn away to a skeleton, yet walked up and down 

 to the last. We had a planter in Carolina w^ho 

 had got an ulcer in his leg, which had troubled 

 him a great majiy years ; at last he applied him- 

 self to one of these Indian conjurers, who was a 

 Pampticough Indian, and was not to give the value 

 of fifteen shillings for the cure. I^ow, I am not 

 positive whether he washed the ulcer with any 

 thing before he used what I am now going to speak 

 of, which was nothing but the rotten, doated grains 

 of Indian corn, beaten to powder and the soft down 

 growing on a turkey's rump. This dried the ulcer 

 up immediately, and no other fontanel was made 

 to discharge the matter, he remaining a healthful 

 man till the time he had the misfortune to be 

 drowned, which was many years after. Another 

 instance, not of my own knowledge, but I had it 

 confirmed by several dwellers in Maryland, where 

 it was done, was, of an honest planter that had 

 been possessed with a strange, lingering distem- 

 per, not usual amongst them, under which he ema- 

 ciated and grew every mouth worse than another, 

 it having held him several years, in which time 

 he had made trial of several doctors, as they 



