"This book is a collection of odd and old receipes to cure the ills of people and animals, mostly told to me by the believers…."Myself, I do not know enough to say how or why one certain weed will calm a fever in a sick dog or antelope, nor can I guess what tells the beasts about that weed… All I can do is wonder, and everything that I have remembered and recorded here has made me do that."For years Mary Fisher has been collecting lore about odd restoratives and remedies-medicines, nostrums, herbs, oils, powders, charms, poultices, liquors, brews and miscellaneous cure-alls for coughs, colds, sore throats, poisons, "consumpshuns, " freckles and warts, nosebleeds, bites of insects and mad dogs, burns, rashes, rheumatism, excess weight, chills, fevers, indigestion, hangovers, impotence, "lowness of Spirrits, " and wounds incurred in the mating season.Now she tells us about the origins, applications and apparent effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of these unusual "receipts" in a group of essays in which wonder and wisdom, nostalgia and quiet humor are the main ingredients. Mrs. Fisher early developed a skepticism about much of what we call the art of medicine and a suspicion of such things as "miracle drugs" and our bland acceptance of them. Out of this grew a consciousness of "the basic simplicity of caring for the human body."Her lore comes from myriad places and people-an Italian raised in the Brazilian jungle, Provence, where the people find some quality of cure in almost every flower and leaf, a Spanish barman, a journal kept by a London apothecary in Shakespeare’s time, Mexico and various parts of the United States from New England to California, a beautiful French actress, a runaway from a Kansas farm, and Mrs. Fisher’s own great-grandmother."There is no doubt, " M. F. K. Fisher writes, "that much of what we know of medicine comes from very ancient times, and from the birds and animals that we have watched."
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