If Any Person Was
In Trouble Or Distress, Or Suffering From A Wound Or Some Secret
Malady, He Would Go
To Don Evaristo for advice and assistance and for
such remedies as he knew; and if he was sick unto
Death he would send
for Don Evaristo to come to him to write down his last will and
testament. For Don Evaristo knew his letters and had the reputation of
a learned man among the gauchos. They considered him better than any
one calling himself a doctor. I remember that his cure for shingles, a
common and dangerous ailment in that region, was regarded as
infallible. The malady took the form of an eruption, like erysipelas,
on the middle of the body and extending round the waist till it formed
a perfect zone. "If the zone is not complete I can cure the disease,"
Don Evaristo would say. He would send some one down to the river to
procure a good-sized toad, then causing the patient to strip, he would
take pen and ink and write on the skin in the space between the two
ends of the inflamed region, in stout letters, the words, _In the
name of the Father_, etc. This done, he would take the toad in his
hand and gently rub it on the inflamed part, and the toad, enraged at
such treatment, would swell himself up almost to bursting and exude a
poisonous milky secretion from his warty skin. That was all, and the
man got well!
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