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, the 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
enormous, and in addition to the history of haematuric he would be
confronted with the problem of the form of fever which seems to be a
recent addition to West African afflictions, the so-called typhoid
malaria, which of late years has come into the Rivers, and
apparently come to stay. This fever is, I may remark, practically
unknown at present in the South-West Coast regions where the "sun
for garbage" plan is adhered to. At present the treatment of all
white man's diseases on the Coast practically consists in the
treatment of malaria, because whatever disease a person gets hold of
takes on a malarial type which masks its true nature. Why, I knew a
gentleman who had as fine an attack of the smallpox as any one would
not wish to have, and who for days behaved as if he had remittent,
and then burst out into the characteristic eruption; and only got
all his earthly possessions burnt, and no end of carbolic acid
dressings for his pains.
I do not suppose this does much harm, as the malaria is the main
thing that wants curing; unless Dr. Plehn is right and quinine is
bad in haematuria. His success in dealing with this fever seems to
support his opinion; and the French doctors on the Coast, who dose
it heavily with quinine, have certainly a very heavy percentage of
mortality among their patients with the haematuric, although in the
other forms of malarial fever they very rarely lose a patient.
But to return to those preventive measures, and having done what we
can with the air, we will turn our attention to the drinking water,
for in addition to malarial microbes the drinking and washing water
of West Africa is liable to contain dermazoic and entozoic
organisms, and if you don't take care you will get from it into your
anatomy Tinea versicolor, Tinea decalvans, Tinea circinata, Tinea
sycosis, Tinea favosa, or some other member of that wretched family,
let alone being nearly certain to import Trichocephalus dispar,
Ascaris lumbricoides, Oxyuris vermicularis, and eight varieties of
nematodes, each of them with an awful name of its own, and
unpleasant consequences to you, and, lastly, a peculiar abomination,
a Filaria. This is not, what its euphonious name may lead you to
suppose, a fern, but it is a worm which gets into the white of the
eye and leads there a lively existence, causing distressing itching,
throbbing and pricking sensations, not affecting the sight until it
happens to set up inflammation. I have seen the eyes of natives
simply swarming with these Filariae. A curious thing about the
disease is that it usually commences in one eye, and when that
becomes over-populated an emigration society sets out for the other
eye, travelling thither under the skin of the bridge of the nose,
looking while in transit like the bridge of a pair of spectacles. A
similar, but not identical, worm is fairly common on the Ogowe, and
is liable to get under the epidermis of any part of the body. Like
the one affecting the eye it is very active in its movements,
passing rapidly about under the skin and producing terrible pricking
and itching, but very trifling inflammation in those cases which I
have seen. The treatment consists of getting the thing out, and the
thing to be careful of is to get it out whole, for if any part of it
is left in, suppuration sets in, so even if you are personally
convinced you have got it out successfully it is just as well to
wash out the wound with carbolic or Condy's fluid. The most
frequent sufferers from these Filariae are the natives, but white
people do get them.
Do not confuse this Filaria with the Guinea worm, Filaria
medinensis, which runs up to ten and twelve feet in length, and
whose habits are different. It is more sedentary, but it is in the
drinking water inside small crustacea (cyclops). It appears
commonly in its human host's leg, and rapidly grows, curled round
and round like a watch-spring, showing raised under the skin.
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