Rhus Toxicodendron

THE ability of man, at a later time, to laugh over the pains of yesterday preserves him from becoming, as the case may be, a prig, a bore, or a hypochondriac. To-day I can smile, actually smile, at the mention of poison ivy; yet but two little months ago, I tossed upon a sleepless couch, one vast, substantial itch, and, with fingers clenched upon the counterpane, strove not to obey that impulse.

At the time I was living with pastoral friends in New Hampshire. Under what hapless circumstances I took my flier in ivy was never clear to any of us. I know only that, one morning at milking-time, I woke from the first sweet sleep of night, to find my epidermis for all the world like one of Roger Babson’s statistical reports of the thickly settled districts, cities of over 50,000 population done in red. So I betook myself to Emma.

‘Land!’ exclaimed she, peering through her specs at my mottled hide. ‘You air pizoned!’

Beyond a doubt. But que faire?

‘In my fambly,’ quoth Emma, ‘we allus stick by the old remedies: a cup of vinegar with a cent in it.’

‘Must, you have a fresh cent in every cup?’ I innocently asked, considerably amazed at this astounding property in our much neglected unit of currency.

‘Take it as a joke and welcome!’ With asperity Emma banged shut the oven door.

From the woodshed came Wal’r’s voice. ‘My folks use nitre,’ he drawled.

‘That’s for a fever, is n’t it?’ I remonstrated cautiously.

‘Inside or out,’ he replied. ‘What do you think pizon ivory is, anyhow?’

I was about to reply, Fire and Brimstone and All Get-Out, when Wal’r continued: ‘It ’s a fever, and no mistake. Why, man, I’ve had my legs swelled big as pillers, from ivory that I tread in while hayin’. I slapped nitre on them legs, and took nitre internal three times a day, and it eased down that swellin’ jest as sweet as a kiss at a huskin’-bee.’

Convinced by such evidence, I trudged off to the general store for pints, quarts, gallons, if need be, of sweet spirits of nitre.

‘Poison ivy?’ inquired the lady of the counter, who had once lived in Saugus, Mass., and gave the pas to no one. ‘You don’t want nitre! Just run out to the gasoline tank, and let Billy spray you with a couple of quarts.’

‘My stars, Verena!’ remonstrated her aunt; ‘who ever heerd of such a new-fangled notion? Jes’ don’t listen to the girl. What you want is potash. Here’s some soap I’ve made to wash the kitchen sink with. It’s got plenty of lye in it. Now you jes’ bile—’

‘Lye!’ I expostulated. ‘Kitchen sink! Gracious Powers, Mrs. Smith, have you no heart?’

‘Iodine is a tol’ble help, they say, for some folks,’ spoke up Oramel Jewell from beside the stove.

His brother, Romanzo, spit reflectively through the door.

‘Dirty stuff, thet iodeen. Why don’t you try salt and vinegar?’

‘That’s two for vinegar,’ I reflected.

Forthwith I purchased a gill of nitre, a pint of vinegar, a quarter’s worth of iodine, a little lye, a twist of salt, and left the store, for the present dispensing with the gasoline shower.

On the stoop the pastor met me.

‘You look like a drug store,’ he laughed.

I told my story to the man of God.

‘Now throw away all that truck at once!’ he interrupted, indicating my sovereign remedies with a fine scorn. ‘The trouble is with your blood.’

That rather irritated me. Though I may not resemble the photographs of Mr. J-ss W-ll-rd after having taken two bottles of Nuxated Iron, I rather fancy my blood. It arrived in Hingham, coursing in a deacon’s veins, in 1636.

‘Thanks,’I said rather stiffly, and walked off.

‘Sulphur and molasses,’he called cheerfully. ‘Make you fit as a tick.'

At the iron bridge, Sid Hunkins (Phoebus, what a name!), who had learned of my complaint, offered his wisdom.

’It’s tew late fur this season,’said Sid, ‘but next spring, the fust ivory as ever you see, you just swaller three little leaves. After that you can go gallivantin’ in the stuff, regardless.'

But I did n’t care twopence for next spring. It was here and now that troubled me.

Before turning down the road to Wal’r’s house, I stopped at the telephone pay-station and sent a telegram to a doctor in Boston, who was a friend of mine:' Badly poisoned by ivy. What shall I do about it?’

Then I walked home and set the harvest of the rural pharmacopoeia on the shelf. In the afternoon a reply came back: ’Doctor Cutts is on his vacation in the Canadian Rockies.’

Despair filled my soul. There ought to be a law preventing medical men from going to such places. With a moan, I rushed to my store of drugs and tossed off a noggin of nitre. Then I painted my chest with iodine, embossed my arms with potash, and submerged my legs in vinegar and pennies.

For six days I was busy — as Wal’r put it — as a hog on a tin roof. Yet there was fascination in the thing. Now I would think the lye was winning; then the vinegar would forge ahead; again, it was the iodine that was downing the fell adversary. And at meal-time — O Volstead, where is thy sting! — my toddy of nitre — 92.4 per cent alcohol — cast a pleasant glow upon this struggle between disease and remedy.

On the seventh day there came a letter from my friend the doctor, who had returned from the Rockies. ‘What have you tried?’ he wrote. ‘The best thing is patience. Poison ivy is like first love; it has to run out its course.’

It had. The scaly tetter vanished; lo! my skin was white again as snow.