Then they'd make poultices, like linseed poultices. Sometimes you'd have pneumonia, pleurisy stitches, and they'd make poultices out of linseed meal to put on your chest.

The women sometimes, their breasts would rise (swell) – get infected from the milk, and they'd do the same. Sometimes a doctor would have to come and lance it, but more often they'd ring out a hot cloth between another cloth and put it around the breasts.

One time Mrs. Pittman wasn't feeling well, and just down the road here, a woman was expecting a baby. She was expecting twins, and she had other family. Mrs. Pittman had delivered all her children, and of course she didn't think anyone else could deliver them, only Mrs. Pittman.

Her husband went up to get Mrs. Pittman. She didn't think that she could come. Lo and behold, her husband went home and told his wife.

"That's okay," she said "I'll go to her!" So she went up to Mrs. Pittman's and stayed up there ten days at Mrs. Pittman's house and had the twins up there, twin boys.

Of course her husband was up to the house almost the ten days too. He used to come every day to his dinner.

Grandmother could be stern when it came to cleanliness. She was very clean. They were more particular than they are today. The patient was washed, always, and of course they always washed their hands with Jeye's fluid any time they could. You always smelled the Jeye's fluid when you went in the house. I can remember that.

When Mrs. Pittman went to a patient, things weren't always sanitary. Often times she would come home and remove her outside clothing in the porch. She would be afraid she had picked up something to endanger her family. Of course these things were rare most of the time. They might be desperately poor, but the things for mother and baby were clean.

However clean or unclean, rich or poor, Mrs. Pittman felt it her duty to go. Her own feelings were put aside as she went to help others. A very stern, kind, and very charitable woman. At times she was at home eating a meal, or mending or washing clothing, when a knock on the door told her someone needed her. She quickly left, leaving her own family behind. The sick and needy were her priorities.