The
Legend of Lycopodium and Pulsatilla
[Frederica E. Gladwin]
Should you ask me, whence this story, whence this legend and tradition, With
the odor of the forest, with the dew and damp of meadow, I should answer, I
should tell you, from the forests and the prairies, From the great lakes of the
Northland, From the mountain, moors, and fenlands,
The good west wind, Mudjekeewis, and the north-west wind, Keewaydin,
Kindly brought the story to me, Softly sang of Pulsatilla, Sang the song of
Lycopodium and the timid Pulsatilla. I repeat it as I heard it from the lips of
these Musicians.
When Spring came to the western prairies each year, she brought a
sunny-haired, blue-eyed maiden, who danced all day among the grasses.
The children always watched for this fairy-like maiden and when they saw
her little purple bonnet and green dress among the grasses, they clasped their
hands with delight,
for they believed that pretty little Pulsatilla lived and danced in the
sunshine just to please them with her beauty. Little they knew of her
usefulness or dreamed of the responsibility resting upon her. When the Spring
father journeyed to the northwest, taking little Pulsatilla with her the
children mourned her departure and patiently waited until she should return
again.
In the Northland, lived a sturdy little rover, whom his friends called
club-moss, though his real name was Lycopodium. The children loved him also
and were never tired of smoothing his soft green coat. Dressed in a
bright green cap and a dark green velvety coat, he roamed the forests all
through the summer and autumn, searching for Pulsatilla and when he could not
find her, he became melancholic and hiding himself under the leaves in the
shadow of the cliffs, he wept and would not be comforted.
At 16 h., when the sun was sinking in the west, his grief seemed greater
than he could bear and he could not calm himself until after eight in the evening.
He grieved so
much that he became ill-tempered and morose. He turned from those who
loved him and would not even see his friends and family.
One day, when he was mourning alone in his hiding place, he heard a bird
singing in the tree-top the first welcome of Spring and the south wind shook
him gently, saying, “Wake up Lycopodium, for the Spring and Pulsatilla are
coming.” Then Lycopodium roused himself and discovered that his clothes were
brown and threadbare, but he stood up in the bright sunshine and soon donned
his dark green velvet coat and soft bright green cap and hastened to the border
of the forest to wait impatiently for Pulsatilla.
Now Lycopodium was sometimes haughty and overbearing but when he came
into the presence of Pulsatilla, he lost all confidence in himself. He could
not take to her for
he was always forgetting the words which he needed to correctly express
his thought, so he watched her timidly from the clearing.
Pulsatilla was a changeable little maiden; one moment she was all smiles
and the next, all tears. Indeed her disposition was just enough like Lycopodium
to be attractive
to him. When she smiled, he laughed, when she was sad, he was
melancholic. She was too timid to speak to him and he was too bashful to talk
to her, so they peeped shyly
at each other and became friends.
A day came when Pulsatilla neither smiled nor looked at Lycopodium but
sat all alone by herself and mourned and wept, her hands clasped in her lap. To
Lycopodium, she seemed the personification of despair. He was deeply distressed
and with tears in his eyes, went to comfort her. Pulsatilla liked to be
comforted and being of a yielding disposition, she readily followed him to the
cool shades of the forest. Both enjoyed cool air, and sat down beside their old
friend Silica. Then Pulsatilla told Lycopodium
the cause of all her sorrow. It seems that in her journeyings, each
year, she had observed the sufferings of the nations and she wept for them in
sympathy until the Great Law Giver had bidden her to heal the people. She had
yielded to his biding, although she knew so timid a little maiden could never
accomplish so great a task. She had found
that although there were some that she could heal, there were others she
could only make better, while still others she could not help at all and she
wept because she could
not obey the whole command of the Great Law Giver.
She had just seen one suffering from rheumatism. He had taken cold from
exposure to wet. His pains were flying, now here now there, <: in the afternoon
and evening and until midnight/warmth of the room/in damp weather/when sitting;
better when moving about slowly; >: in the open air; She could cure him, but
she had met others nearly
like him whom she could not even help. At this point, Rhus-t. who was
swinging from a branch overhead, where he had climbed, called out, “When you
find a fellow pretty much like that, only he is > in a warm room, <:
beginning to move/from continued motion; just let him alone, and send
him to me, I’ll cure him for you”. Pulsatilla although somewhat startled
by a promise of help from such an unexpected source began to feel a little
relieved for possibly the command of the Great Law Giver might even yet be
fully obeyed. Then she told them that often after she had relieved the acute
state, she found a chronic condition
which had previously existed, which she could not help. These patients
have gouty joints and, as Rhus-t. had said, were worse on beginning to move and
better from
continued motion. Rhus-t. began to be uneasy when he heard this
condition was chronic, for he had tried in vain to cure many such patients, but
Lycopodium knowing
that such cases came into his field of labor, told Pulsatilla to do what
she could for them in the acute stage and then give them to him and he would
complete the cure. Whereupon Pulsatilla thanked him so kindly that tears came
into his eyes. Pulsatilla’s tears had disappeared entirely by this time, for
she began to understand that she
had misinterpreted the command of the Great Law Giver and that He only
meant she should do all she could toward the healing of the people.
Much comforted, she went on to speak of the throat troubles she had
encountered. When the throat feels raw, swallowing is difficult, and there is a
sensation of swelling
in the throat; if the patient had a disposition just like her own, she
could cure him but there were very similar cases which began on the right side
and went to the left that
she could not help at all. The Lycopodium told her that whenever the
trouble began in the nose and went to the right side of the throat, or began on
the right side and went
to the left, he would take care of the patient and furthermore, almost
any trouble, such as headache, pain in the eye, pain in the tonsil, diphtheria,
pain in the mammary glands, pain in the ovary, and rheumatic affections, which
began on the right side and went to the left, it would be his pleasure to cure
for her. Just then Lach. wriggled through the grass at their feet and stopped
long enough to remark that when those troubles began on the left side and went
to the right, he would undertake to cure. Oftentimes, he could finish up a case
that Lycopodium had been at work upon, but could not finish.
Then Pulsatilla related cases of consumption that had troubled her. When
she went to work in her desire to help, she found, if there was: a loose
morning cough and dry evening cough, soreness in chest expectoration yellowish
green, choking, gagging, cough worse lying down, better sitting up, better in a
cold room, suffocation worse lying
on the back, better sitting up, worse in a warm room, she could usually
make them much more comfortable but sometimes instead of being relieved, the
patient became
much worse. The loose morning cough turned to a dry cough, the
expectoration was suppressed and the patient died suffering, much to
Pulsatilla’s distress.
Here Stann-met., who when the conversation
turned towards phthisis, had pushed his head above the ground and became an
interested listener, told Pulsatilla that when
she got into trouble like that to send for him and he would undo the
work she had done and perhaps give the patient a new group of symptoms, which
someone else could
take up and cure the case.
Lycopodium told her that in those advanced cases of phthisis where there
was morning cough with green expectoration, pain in the chest on coughing and
upon deep inspiration, short rapid breathing with waving of the wings of the
nose, wrinkled forehead, red sand in the urine, hectic fever, profuse night
sweats and < 16 h., he would
help the patient for her.
Here Tuberculinum paused in his flight to
tell them that he could help more cases than all the rest put together. He
could put them in condition so that someone else could
go on with the cure. Tuberculinum is a very boastful fellow.
There is another class of sufferers which annoys Pulsatilla, the class
to which belong those who have deviated from the straight line of morality. She
has an extreme aversion
to them and wonders if they are worth the saving, but the Great Law
Giver had issued the command “go forth and heal the sick” and with the command
had given her the power to heal even these. What right had she to refuse? So
when they come to her with frequent, almost ineffectual desire to urinate,
cutting pains during urination, tenesmus, burning in the urethra during
urination and after urination, the urine is discharged drop by drop and is
followed by drops of blood, discharge from the urethra yellowish green, the
patients are better in the open air, and are of a yielding disposition, she
cures them. Often these people try to cure themselves. They go to the drugstore
for medicine and succeed in suppressing the discharge and most of the symptoms.
Orchitis is developed, then not knowing what next to do they come to Pulsatilla
for help and she cures them also.
In some of these cases (suppression caused by copaiva), the orchitis had
been allowed to become chronic. Lycopodium promised to take care of all such
abused and neglected cases where there were pains in the perineum upon sitting,
urine profuse at night, scanty during the day and burns the parts over which is
passes. A small amount of urine in
the bladder causes pain in the back > after passing the urine,
continued teasing to urinate, enlargement of the prostate, and white figwarts
appear which are fissured.
So Pulsatilla told the story of her trials and so it was discovered that
Lycopodium could almost always help her out of her difficulties and when he
failed and both were “groping blindly in the darkness.” Others were waiting to
do good these comprehended not. Always after that day when Pulsatilla went
about healing the sick, she was followed by her good knight and true, the
Northland rover, Lycopodium, and to this day, the legend tells us, they are at
work for “the healing of the nations”.