For It Is
Possible For A West African Native To Be Made By European Culture
Into A Very Good Sort
Of man, not the same sort of man that a white
man is, but a man a white man can
Shake hands with and associate
with without any loss of self-respect. It is by no means necessary,
however, that the African should have any white culture at all to
become a decent member of society at large. Quite the other way
about, for the percentage of honourable and reliable men among the
bushmen is higher than among the educated men.
I do not believe that the white race will ever drag the black up to
their own particular summit in the mountain range of civilisation.
Both polygamy and slavery {514} are, for divers reasons, essential
to the well-being of Africa - at any rate for those vast regions of
it which are agricultural, and these two institutions will
necessitate the African having a summit to himself. Only - alas! for
the energetic reformer - the African is not keen on mountaineering in
the civilisation range. He prefers remaining down below and being
comfortable. He is not conceited about this; he admires the higher
culture very much, and the people who inconvenience themselves by
going in for it - but do it himself? NO. And if he is dragged up
into the higher regions of a self-abnegatory religion, six times in
ten he falls back damaged, a morally maimed man, into his old swampy
country fashion valley.
CHAPTER XXII. DISEASE IN WEST AFRICA.
Great as is the delay and difficulty placed in the way of the
development of the immense natural resources of West Africa by the
labour problem, there is another cause of delay to this development
greater and more terrible by far - namely, the deadliness of the
climate. "Nothing hinders a man, Miss Kingsley, half so much as
dying," a friend said to me the other day, after nearly putting his
opinion to a practical test. Other parts of the world have more
sensational outbreaks of death from epidemics of yellow fever and
cholera, but there is no other region in the world that can match
West Africa for the steady kill, kill, kill that its malaria works
on the white men who come under its influence.
Malaria you will hear glibly talked of; but what malaria means and
consists of you will find few men ready to attempt to tell you, and
these few by no means of a tale. It is very strange that this
terrible form of disease has not attracted more scientific
investigators, considering the enormous mortality it causes
throughout the tropics and sub-tropics. A few years since, when the
peculiar microbes of everything from measles to miracles were being
"isolated," several bacteriologists isolated the malarial microbe,
only unfortunately they did not all isolate the same one. A resume
of the various claims of these microbes is impossible here, and
whether one of them was the true cause, or whether they all have an
equal claim to this position, is not yet clear; for malaria, as far
as I have seen or read of it seems to be not so much one distinct
form of fever as a group of fevers - a genus, not a species. Many
things point to this being the case; particularly the different
forms so called malarial poisoning takes in different localities.
This subject may be also subdivided and complicated by going into
the controversy as to whether yellow fever is endemic on the West
Coast or not. That it has occurred there from time to time there
can be no question: at Fernando Po in 1862 and 1866, in Senegal
pretty frequently; and at least one epidemic at Bonny was true
yellow fever. But in the case of each of these outbreaks it is said
to have been imported from South America, into Fernando Po, by ships
from Havana, and into Bonny by a ship which had on her previous run
been down the South American ports with a cargo of mules. The
litter belonging to this mule cargo was not cleared out of her until
she got into Bonny, when it was thrown overside into the river, and
then the yellow fever broke out. But, on the other hand, South
America taxes West Africa - the Guinea Coast - with having first sent
out yellow fever in the cargoes of slaves. This certainly is a
strange statement, because the African native rarely has malarial
fever severely - he has it, and you are often informed So-and-so has
got yellow fever, but he does not often die of it, merely is truly
wretched and sick for a day or so, and then recovers. {516}
Regarding the haematuria there is also controversy. A very
experienced and excellent authority doubts whether this is entirely
a malarial fever, or whether it is not, in some cases at any rate,
brought on by over-doses of quinine, and Dr. Plehn asserts, and his
assertions are heavily backed up by his great success in treating
this fever, that quinine has a very bad influence when the
characteristic symptoms have declared themselves, and that it should
not be given. I hesitate to advise this, because I fear to induce
any one to abandon quinine, which is the great weapon against
malaria, and not from any want of faith in Dr. Plehn, for he has
studied malarial fevers in Cameroon with the greatest energy and
devotion, bringing to bear on the subject a sound German mind
trained in a German way, and than this, for such subjects, no better
thing exists. His brother, also a doctor, was stationed in Cameroon
before him, and is now in the German East African possessions,
similarly working hard, and when these two shall publish the result
of their conjoint investigations, we shall have the most important
contribution to our knowledge of malaria that has ever appeared. It
is impossible to over-rate the importance of such work as this to
West Africa, for the man who will make West Africa pay will be the
scientific man who gives us something more powerful against malaria
than quinine.
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