Dooley’s Unguent

The shamble leg man grew up in a house with three woman, his great aunt Alma, his greater aunt Alma-May and his grandmother. His great aunt Alma wore a painters’ smock and linen gloves, his greater aunt Alma-May wore a tinkers’ vest and too-tight shoes and his grandmother wore whatever was laid out on her bed, syphilis having eaten away half of her brain. His aunt Alma bought stool softener and calamine lotion from the Comalcalco sisters. The sisters ran the Gates of Hell Apothecary, doling out tablets and morphine, scented oils and rocket-shaped suppositories for the weak bowelled and incontinent.

The Comalcalco sisters dispensed azithromycin (orally) ceftriaxone (intramuscularly) penicillin (parenterally) acyclovir, valacyclovir and famciclovir (orally, intravenously and in tablet form), and beetroot salve for nongonococcal urethritis. His grandmamma took Benzathine penicillin by injection, Tetracycline ad orally, Aqueous crystalline penicillin dissolved in warmish tea, and Procaine penicillin (baked in a date and nut loaf) with a probenecid chaser.

His grandmother contracted syphilis, treponema pallidum, from a one-night stand with a cooper by the name of Crapper Simms. His greater aunt Alma-May came down with Cervicitis, for which she was prescribed Dooley’s unguent and a mild pyloric. His great aunt Alma was fit as a fiddle, never having to fend off Chlamydial trachomatis, gonorrhoeae or the ague.