Cape Breton's Magazine

over. She'd go and she'd stay there ten days. A lot she didn't charge anything for. Such as anybody was sick for a short time, like now say they took sick and was going to die and she went there, no matter how long she stayed she never charged them. She would stay till everything was all over. Till everything was all over and cleared a- way. Perhaps she'd stay for a day or two and help to clean and wash up different people, you know. Oh, she prepared then for the funeral. Yes, she washed them and combed their hair and dressed them and fixed them all up. There was no undertakers or no nothing. Helen Martin, Membertou: I first came to know Bob Paul in 1934 or 35. It was one of the times when I came back from Children's Hospital in Halifax. I was coming home just for a weekend before this major surgery to have my arm amputated due to bone trouble. I had been in and out of hospitals for fourteen years. My mother told me: "There's a man coming tomorrow. He's going to come and see your arm, see if he can save it. Because you're gonna go back to the hospital and they're goin to cut your arm off." Bob Paul did come. He told my mother: • • I'm going to get the medicine. Pro? bably I'll be away for quite a while." So my parents didn't take me back to the hos? pital. He spent three days in the woods, I don't know how he did it. He was using burnt balsam and something else. And he also mentioned this is the type of medicine that cured scurvy when Jacques Cartier, his men went down with scurvy. It was Indian balsam. Anyway, he brought it over and he asked my mother to bring him a brown paper bag. No cloth. "In. the old days they used a piece of birch bark for bandages • we're gonna use the brown paper, it's made of wood." The medicine, it smelled so nice. He put this on the arm. It looked pretty bad. I couldn't lift it. It was nothing there but bone and skin. For three days I couldn't sleep after that medicine was on. I cried and cried and cried. All that night. My mother hit me, for me not to take it off. It hurt so much. He didn''t stay. But three days afterwards he came back. And by that time the arm had stopped paining. So he put another medicine on it • the same stuff and wrapped it up in brown paper. Then he came back on the third day again.. "It's going to take me 28 days to cure her for her 14 years in the hospital." I was cured in exactly 28 days. The bone had healed up. And my arm, although it was thin • was better. My mother asked him how much for curing my arm and he said, "Well, four dollars, I just want to get my chewing tobacco." The only thing, when he was making the medicine ready to put on my arm, he told ray mother to bless herself and to bless me. He depended on that medicine to cure me. He wore just the plain clothes every other citizen wears. Picnic Tables Well-water Ice Cubes Morrison's General Store WRECK COVE HmilD MOTORS LIHITED Your Chrysler Dealer 849-5588 McKeen Street Glace Bay Isle Royale Beverages Limited Your authorized COCA-COLA bottler 564-8130 562-4439 24SW?ltMiSt. SydiMy, N. S. ??Se seillean a'phosas daoine ri lusan Flemming's Honey Truro and Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia V PRINTERS LTD. 180 TOWNSEND STREET, SYDNEY, N.S. TELEPHONE (902) 564-8245 Formerly Cape Breton Printers Angel Manufacturing & Supply Co. Lfd For the Best in Heating and Supplies j??. o. iox e NORTH SYDNEY MOVA SCOTIA "' Cajfe Breton's Ma'azine/19