PADUTCH-LIFE-L Archives

From: "Vee L. Housman" <>
Subject: 38-Dr. Brown-Sequad's Life Elixir
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 13:01:21 -0400

DR. BROWN-SEQUAD'S LIFE ELIXIR

I read an article in the paper a few weeks ago about some
people in Centre County who believe the world will end next year.
At first I didn't think much about it, but I'm seeing alarming things
happen every day, and I think, by God, there's something to their
belief. The thing that convinced me that we're approaching the end
is Doctor Brown-Sequad's discovery of a medicine to make older
people become young again.

Previously, the only way known to make an older man young
was when he went crazy over women at the age of eighty years.
I've know older men who threw away their canes when they
discovered a pretty young woman. But the new way to make older
people become young is to get fresh blood from a young pig, calf,
sheep, or dog and mix it with whiskey, turpentine, red pepper and
things like that, then shoot it under the skin with a syringe. In five
minutes the patient would become as young and energetic as a
twenty-year-old. Here at the Mountain Dr. Belsinger has started
such a business, and old people are coming from miles around and
returning so young and healthy looking that their wives and children
are having to look twice to recognize them.

The day before yesterday the doctor put Six-Foot Betz
through the treatment. She had already seen her sixtieth year
thunder by. She thought she could unload her years, and the good
people from the Mountain were hoping that they would soon unload
her. After the operation she said she felt like a deer, and when she
began to wave her long arms about, all the men waiting in the
doctor's office suddenly had more important business elsewhere.
Then she went outside, placed her hand on a six-rail fence, and tried
to make the leap like a deer buck. Of course, all the men were
embarrassed by the way she was showing off. They looked the
other way when her long, blue, spindly legs flew over the fence rail.

Since nearly every man and woman from the Mountain took
the treatment, Polly came after me to give it try. But you can see
from my picture that it hasn't had much effect on me. The wrinkles
are still all in my face, and I don't believe it did me as much good as
a jigger from the black bottle would. Like Betz, I tried to jump over
the fence too, but a root got caught in the hole in my boot and
almost tore out my big toe. I don't have much belief in things like
this, but many others do believe in it, and if there were any truth to
it then look out for awful things to happen.

The coffin makers would go hungry, the gravestone carvers
would go out of business, lawyers wouldn't have any estates to
settle, and the poor doctors would have to take up veterinary
medicine until someone discovered how to make old horses into
young fillies. If people didn't die anymore they wouldn't be afraid
of the devil either. That’d throw all the preachers out of business.
The children would keep coming and the elders wouldn't die off.
They would farm themselves like the rabbits on our Mountain, and
the world would be so full of people that they couldn't all stay on
the land and they'd push each other into the sea. Then look out for
the end of the world!

I want to wait awhile for more word from Centre County to
find out what arrangements they've made when the end comes.

* * *

Note: This collection of Boonastiel stories was written by H. A.
Harter in the original Penna-Dutch dialect and were published in the
Keystone Gazette, Bellefonte, PA, between 1894 and 1904. They
were translated and transcribed by Bob James of Alaska and they
are being posted to this PADUTCH-LIFE mailing list with his
permission.

This thread:

• 38-Dr. Brown-Sequad's Life Elixir by "Vee L. Housman" <>