The Midwest pioneer, his ills, cures, & doctors - University Library ...

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anatomy and physiology, a treatise on midwifery with
treatment necessary during pregnancy, and a materia
medica of Indian remedies or vegetable compounds. From
its relative scarcity today, this book is assumed not to have
had a wide circulation.
Although Dr. William Daily, M.D., called his book, published
at Louisville in 1848, The Indian Doctor's Practice
of Medicine or Daily's Family Physician, it
included elements
of the Thomsonian vegetable-heat treatments. Two
remedies, one for dysentery and a Pain Extractor, he valued
too highly to include with the price of his book. These
could be purchased separately for a dollar.
A good sample of the Indian-medicine household handybook
was James Cooper's The Indian Doctor's Receipt Book
published at Uniontown, Stark County, Ohio, in 1855.
For a dollar one got not only several dozen assorted cures
for blind piles, palpitation of the heart— digitalis, by the
way— cholera, and worms, but also the latest and best
information on freckle lotion, how to make the hair curl,
make ink, kill rats, keep potatoes from rotting, make soft
soap and shoe blacking, catch fish by Hindoo art, distill
gin, drive away ants, and make home "pleasing to an
erring husband." In Part Seven was a valuable formula
"to make yourself loving and be loved in return":
"In the first place it will be necessary for you to find an
object upon which to fix your affections, at the same time
being careful to select such an one as you could live with
agreeably. When you have succeeded in this, you must
devote one hour of every day, evening or night, to thinking
of that object, alone. Try, if possible, to so arrange it that
you can retire alone, always at the same hour of each day,
and if you cannot keep your mind fixed, spell the name of
your object, letter by letter until you have succeeded,
which will require but a few sittings; before which time
you should avoid his or her company as much as possible,
but afterwards you may go into company as much as you
choose, but by all means, refrain from paying marked
attention to any one, not even excepting the one you wish