My other great find of the weekend.

Bluestone is a sandstone, similar to brownstone, only it is gray or 
blue, sometimes nearly purple. Often used for terrace pavers and 
sidewalks. As I know it commonly quarried on the southwestern portion of 
the Catskills into Northern NJ.

“I had a sore on my ankle and it would spread and it would come up my 
leg plumb up to my belt, and my leg would swell fit to bust. The blood 
would run out of it, and I would stay as high as seven, eight, nine days 
in the hospital at a time, and they would run that disease down to my 
ankle, but they couldn't cure it. They said I would carry it to my 
grave. . . . So I was in the hospital one time and there was an old 
woman sitting there at the desk and I was on the bed. She told me, she 
said, "Mister, I don't know your name, but I can tell you something that 
will cure that." And I said, "I wish you would, this doctor here is 
wearing me out." She told me to get some bluevittle or bluestone and 
dissolve it up in lukewarm water and wash my leg in it. And I done so, 
and now my leg is as well as anybody's leg.” frm /Everything in Its 
Path, Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood/ by Kai T. 
Erikson, p 229.

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