My Mouth was Just Raw
Heroes Remember
My Mouth was Just Raw
Well the biggest thing was diphtheria. The doctor we had with
us, like the guys that died with it, he tried to make a serum
and innoculate the other guys with. I don’t know any medical, I
don’t know the medical terms or anything but he was a very smart
doctor. I had beri-beri and pellagra, but I didn’t have
dysentery. Pellagra it causes sores, my mouth was just raw. And
finally this doctor, he got hold of some garlic, and that cured
the mouth, the rawness in your mouth. Cause you couldn’t hardly
stand even to eat your rice, your mouth was just raw. I’ll tell
you something that I had to go through. Like, I was never
circumcised when I was a kid. And I was, beri-beri so bad that
well my foreskin’s... so I couldn’t urinate. So he got four guys
to sit on me and he cut my foreskin off, and it was a dull
knife, I’ll tell you. And then I had nine teeth pulled without
anaesthetic also, by him. And I, I don’t know, I broke out with
boils, had lots of boils. But they wouldn’t let you stay sick,
you had to keep working. Unless you were so sick you couldn’t
walk. They had a hospital there, but you didn’t go to the
hospital very often.
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