It’s a wonder I’m alive to tell the tale

Published as Household Remedies in The Oxford Book of Traditional Verse:

Most folks believe in doctors, but there's my old girl she don't,
And when I'm laid upon my bed send out for one she won't;
She says she's got enough to do without her paying fees,
And doctors me herself she does with household remedies.

No matter what the ailment is she knows a simple cure,
But whether it fits my complaint we're never certain sure.
For instance, when my aching hollow tooth upset my health,
That putty didn't answer though she pushed it in herself.

She tried to stop the toothache with her gutta-percha sole, 
A thing she said was never known to fail,
And to melt the pieces in held a light beneath my chin—
It's wonder I'm alive to tell the tale.

I used to have the bilious bile through eating pork at night,
And someone said a black draught would be the thing to set me right. 
We hadn't got no black draughts but we have some dominoes—
She vaselined the double six and down my neck it goes.

And when I had a face which swelled as big as Pilsdon Hill, 
I had the earache awful and the gumboil took a chill,
She said she'd try her grandad's cure, a thing she knew by heart, 
And a little sweet oil and feather seemed to play the leading part.

She tried to stop the earache with some sweetened paraffin, 
You'd have thought I was a bedstead from a sale;
But that beastly low-flashed oil blew off my lovely boil—
It's wonder I'm alive to tell the tale.

I wore a dandelion when my liver bad became,
And all the boys got shouting after me in Laddin's Lane, 
And then I up and tells her 'tis medicine I need;
Instead of Carter's liver pills she gave me Carter's seeds.

And when my blood was very hot, well ninety in the shade, 
She very nearly corpsed me with the cooling stuff she made.

She got some salts and senna and some raspberry ice and cream 
And asked the man to cool it in his pail.
What I suffered no-one knows when the raspberry unfroze—
It's a wonder I'm alive to tell the tale.