WATERCOLOUR #15

A NIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS


They made tents of blankets and cloaks hung over limbs of trees.
Asbury slept for only two hours; and was ill for about a month.
"M'Kendree had to lift me up and down from my horse like a helpless child."
He stopped for three days.
Too weak to stand, he then preached kneeling on a chair.


Medicine was primitive. Asbury cured a slave's sore leg with a bread and milk poultice; and a horse's wounded leg with a slice of bacon bandaged in place.
In 1798 a remedy for his own illness was "an extraordinary diet," one wineglass every morning of a drink made from hard cider, one hundred nails (presumably strained off!), black snakeroot, fennel seed, and wormwood.
Even so, he was a successful travelling doctor.
 

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