Creole nurses were matchless; and doctors were seldom called into Creole homes in the old days except in desperate cases. There were family secrets in regard to tisanes and cataplasms and purgatifs which boasted a San Domingo or a Martinique origin, and which many good old black women averred had come from Africa in the first years of American slavery — the only heirlooms which aged obi-men could bequeath to their slave children. Many of these secrets are kept with something of religious awe. Neither love nor money nor menaces could extort them from the owners. If childless, it is more than likely the secret will die with their owners; if they have children, these generally inherit the mystical power, but hardly ever do they seem in this generation to obtain the success of their fathers and mothers. We have often suggested that all the extant knowledge in regard to
