or the
sneezing
powder .
Yeats
.
'The remedies for diseases belonging to the
skins next the brain, headache, vertigo, cramp, convulsions, palsy,
incubus, apoplexy, falling sickness. '
THOMAS.
It is what I bid you to tell him that it was the falling sickness.
ANDREW [_dropping book_].
O, my dear, look at all the marks gone out of it! Wait, now, I partly
remember what he said . . . a blister he spoke of . . . or to be smelling
hartshorn . . .
or the sneezing powder . . . or if all fails, to try
letting the blood.
FATHER JOHN.
All this has nothing to do with the real case. It is all waste of time.
ANDREW.
That is what I was thinking myself, Father. Sure it was I was the first
to call out to you when I saw you coming down from the hill-side, and
to bring you in to see what could you do. I would have more trust in
your means than in any doctor's learning. And in case you might fail
to cure him, I have a cure myself I heard from my grandmother--God rest
her soul! --and she told me she never knew it to fail. A person to have
the falling sickness, to cut the top of his nails and a small share of
the hair of his head, and to put it down on the floor, and to take a
harry-pin and drive it down with that into the floor and to leave it
there. 'That is the cure will never fail,' she said, 'to rise up any
person at all having the falling sickness. '
FATHER JOHN [_hand on ear_].
skins next the brain, headache, vertigo, cramp, convulsions, palsy,
incubus, apoplexy, falling sickness. '
THOMAS.
It is what I bid you to tell him that it was the falling sickness.
ANDREW [_dropping book_].
O, my dear, look at all the marks gone out of it! Wait, now, I partly
remember what he said . . . a blister he spoke of . . . or to be smelling
hartshorn . . .
or the sneezing powder . . . or if all fails, to try
letting the blood.
FATHER JOHN.
All this has nothing to do with the real case. It is all waste of time.
ANDREW.
That is what I was thinking myself, Father. Sure it was I was the first
to call out to you when I saw you coming down from the hill-side, and
to bring you in to see what could you do. I would have more trust in
your means than in any doctor's learning. And in case you might fail
to cure him, I have a cure myself I heard from my grandmother--God rest
her soul! --and she told me she never knew it to fail. A person to have
the falling sickness, to cut the top of his nails and a small share of
the hair of his head, and to put it down on the floor, and to take a
harry-pin and drive it down with that into the floor and to leave it
there. 'That is the cure will never fail,' she said, 'to rise up any
person at all having the falling sickness. '
FATHER JOHN [_hand on ear_].
