fever, particularly how to avoid getting it, and you will find
the most dogmatic of these are people who have been
singularly unlucky in the matter, or people who know nothing
of local conditions. These latter are the most trying of all
to deal with. They tell you, truly enough no doubt, that the
malaria is in the air, in the exhalations from the ground, which
are greatest about sunrise and sunset, and in the drinking
water, and that you must avoid chill, excessive mental and
bodily exertion, that you must never get anxious, or excited,
or lose your temper. Now there is only one— the drinking
water— of this list that you can avoid, for, owing to the great
variety and rapid growth of bacteria encouraged by the
tropical temperature, and the aqueous saturation of the
atmosphere from the heavy rainfall, and the great extent of
swamp, &c., it is practically impossible to destroy them in
the air to a satisfactory extent. I was presented by scientific
friends, when I first went to the West Coast, with two devices
supposed to do this. One was a lamp which you burnt some
chemical in ; it certainly made a smell that nothing could
live with— but then I am not nothing, and there are enough
smells on the Coast now. I gave it up after the first half-hour.
The other device was a muzzle, a respirator, I should say.
W e ll! all I have got to say about that is that you need be a
better-looking person than I am to wear a thing like that
without causing panic in a district. Then orders to avoid the
night air are still more difficult to obey— may I ask how you
are to do without air from 6.30 P.M. to 6.30 A.M.? or what
other air there is but night air, heavy with malarious exhalations,
available then ?
The drinking water you have a better chance with, as I will
presently state; chill you cannot avoid. When you are at
work on the Coast, even with the greatest care, the sudden
fall of temperature that occurs after a tornado coming at the
end of a stewing-hot day, is Sure to tell on any one, and as
for the orders regarding temper neither the natives, nor the
country, nor the trade, help you in the least. But still you
must remember that although it is impossible to fully carry
out these orders, you can do a good deal towards doing
so, and preventive measures are the great thing, for it is
better to escape fever altogether, or to get off with a light
touch of it, than to make a sensational recovery from Yellow
Jack himself.
There is little doubt that a certain make of man has the
best chance of surviving the Coast climate— an energetic, spare,
nervous but light-hearted creature, capable of enjoying whatever
there may be to enjoy, and incapable of dwelling on
discomforts or worries. It is quite possible for a person of
this sort to live, and work hard on the Coast for a considerable
period, possibly with better health than he would have in
England. The full-blooded, corpulent and vigorous should
avoid West Africa like the plague. One after another, men
and women, who looked, as the saying goes, as if you could
take a lease of their lives, I have seen come out and die,
and it gives one a sense of horror when they arrive at your
West Coast station, for you feel a sort of accessory before the
fact to murder, but what can you do except get yourself
laughed at as a croaker, and attend the funeral ? ^
The best ways of avoiding the danger of the night air are—
to have your evening meal about 6.30 or 7,— 8 is too late ; sleep
under a mosquito curtain whether there are mosquitoes in your
district or not, and have a meal before starting out in the
morning, a good hot cup of tea or coffee and bread and butter,
if you can get it, if not, something left from last night s supper
or even aguma. Regarding meals, of course we come to the
vexed question of stimulants— all the evidence is in favour
of alcohol, of a proper sort, taken at proper times, and in
proper quantities, being extremely valuable. Take the case
of the missionaries, who are almost all teetotalers, they are
young men and women who have to pass a medical examination
before coming out, and whose lives on the Coast are
far easier than those of other classes of white men, yet
the mortality among them is far heavier than in any other
class. . . ,
Mr. Stanley says that wine is the best form of stimulant,
but that it should not be taken before the evening meal.
Certainly on the South-West Coast, where a heavy, but sound,
red wine imported from Portugal is the common drink, thè
mortality is less than on the West Coast. Beer has had what
one might call a thorough trial in Cameroon since the
German occupation and is held by authorities to be the cause
in part of the number of cases of haematuric fever in that
river being greater than in other districts. But this subject
requires scientific comparative observation on various parts of
the Coast, for Cameroons is at the beginning of the South-
West Coast, whereon the percentage of cases of haematuric
to those of intermittent and remittent fevers is far higher than
on the West Coast.
A comparative study of the diseases of the western division
of the continent would, I should say, repay a scientific doctor, if
he survived. The material he would have to deal with would be