"Is the plague among
us!" The master turned on him. "Here and now, I say
five lashes for the man who says that word again! Has any
man here sense about a plain fever?"
None else speaking, I said that long ago I had studied
for a time with a leech, and that I was somewhat used to
care of the sick. "Then you are my man!" quoth the
master, and forthwith took me to the Admiral. I became
Juan Lepe, the physician.
It was, I held, a fever received while wandering through
the ravines and woods of Gomera. Master Bernardo had
in his cabin drugs and tinctures, and we breathed now all
the salt of Ocean-Sea, and the ship was clean. I talked
to Beltran the cook about diet, and I chose Sancho and a
man that I liked, one Luis Torres, for nurses. Two others
sickened this night, and one the next day, but none afterward.
None died; in ten days all were recovered. Other
ailments aboard I doctored also. Don Diego de Arana was
subject to fits of melancholy with twitchings of the body. I
had watched Isaac the Physician cure such things as this,
and now I followed instruction. I put my hands upon the
patient and I strengthened his will with mine, sending into
him desire for health and perception of health. His inner
man caught tune. The melancholy left him and did not
return. Master Bernardo threw off the fever, sat up and
moved about.
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