|
"Your father should have been
a doctor," my nurse Jenny once remarked as
she surveyed his impressive medicine cabinet filled with all sorts of
jars, bottles and pill boxes. "He knows a cure for
everything."
Most of the medicines were leftovers from old prescriptions,
and only a few could be considered utilitarian. But he did have
his own pet cures for almost any ailment: for cuts, Sylpho-
Nathol; for persistent coughs, 'whiskey medicine' (sugar satur-
ated with rye); for minor coughs and colds, and as a general
preventative, red gum or slippery elm lozenges; for stomach dis-orders,
Castoria or brandy, depending. Whenever I went on a
trip he would give me some brandy for the trots, but the bottle
was never labeled as such. Once on the train between Woodstock, Vermont,
and White River Junction, I was looking for some-
thing in my suitcase and came across the brandy in a little
bottle labeled Eyewater'. Uncle Ralph Williams saw it and re-marked,
"That's a funny color for eyewater." |
