The
Native Treatment Of This Pest Is Very Cautiously To Open The Skin
Over The Head Of The Worm And Secure It Between A Little Cleft Bit
Of Bamboo And Then Gradually Wind The Rest Of The Affair Out.
Only
a small portion can be wound out at a time, as the wound is very
liable to inflame, and should the worm break, it is certain to
inflame badly, and a terrible wound will result.
You cannot wind it
out by the tail because you are then, so to speak, turning its fur
the wrong way, and it catches in the wound.
I should, I may remark, strongly advise any one who likes to start
early on a canoe journey to see that no native member of the party
has a Filaria medinensis on hand; for winding it up is always
reserved for a morning job and as many other jobs are similarly
reserved it makes for delay.
I know, my friends, that you one and all say that the drinking water
at your particular place is of singular beauty and purity, and that
you always tell the boys to filter it; but I am convinced that that
water is no more to be trusted than the boys, and I am lost in
amazement at people of your intelligence trusting the trio of water,
boys, and filter, in the way you do. One favourite haunt of mine
gets its drinking water from a cemented hole in the back yard into
which drains a very strong-smelling black little swamp, which is
surrounded by a ridge of sandy ground, on which are situated several
groups of native houses, whose inhabitants enhance their fortunes
and their drainage by taking in washing. At Fernando Po the other
day I was assured as usual that the water was perfection, "beautiful
spring coming down from the mountain," etc. In the course of the
afternoon affairs took me up the mountain to Basile, for the first
part of the way along the course of the said stream. The first
objects of interest I observed in the drinking-water supply were
four natives washing themselves and their clothes; the next was the
bloated body of a dead goat reposing in a pellucid pool. The path
then left the course of the stream, but on arriving in the region of
its source I found an interesting little colony of Spanish families
which had been imported out whole, children and all, by the
Government. They had a nice, neat little cemetery attached, which
his excellency the doctor told me was "stocked mostly with children,
who were always dying off from worms." Good, so far, for the
drinking water! and as to what that beautiful stream was soaking up
when it was round corners - I did not see it, so I do not know - but I
will be bound it was some abomination or another. But it's no use
talking, it's the same all along, Sierra Leone, Grain Coast, Ivory
Coast, Gold Coast, Lagos, Rivers, Cameroon, Congo Francais, Kacongo,
Congo Belge, and Angola. When you ask your white friends how they
can be so reckless about the water, which, as they know, is a
decoction of the malarious earth, exposed night and day to the
malarious air, they all up and say they are not; they have "got an
awfully good filter, and they tell the boys," etc., and that they
themselves often put wine or spirit in the water to kill the
microbes. Vanity, vanity! At each and every place I know, "men
have died and worms have eaten them." The safest way of dealing
with water I know is to boil it hard for ten minutes at least, and
then instantly pour it into a jar with a narrow neck, which plug up
with a wad of fresh cotton-wool - not a cork; and should you object
to the flat taste of boiled water, plunge into it a bit of red-hot
iron, which will make it more agreeable in taste. BEFORE boiling
the water you can carefully filter it if you like. A good filter is
a very fine thing for clearing drinking water of hippopotami,
crocodiles, water snakes, catfish, etc., and I daresay it will stop
back sixty per cent. of the live or dead African natives that may be
in it; but if you think it is going to stop back the microbe of
marsh fever - my good sir, you are mistaken. And remember that you
must give up cold water, boiled or unboiled, altogether; for if you
take the boiled or filtered water and put it into one of those
water-coolers, and leave it hanging exposed to night air or day on
the verandah, you might just as well save yourself the trouble of
boiling it at all.
Next in danger to the diseases come the remedies for them. Let the
new-comer remember, in dealing with quinine, calomel, arsenic, and
spirits, that they are not castor sugar nor he a glass bottle, but
let him use them all - the two first fairly frequently - not waiting
for an attack of fever and then ladling them into himself with a
spoon. The third, arsenic - a drug much thought of by the French,
who hold that if you establish an arsenic cachexia you do not get a
malarial one - should not be taken except under a doctor's orders.
Spirit is undoubtedly extremely valuable when, from causes beyond
your control, you have got a chill. Remember always your life hangs
on quinine, and that it is most important to keep the system
sensitive to it, which you do not do if you keep on pouring in heavy
doses of it for nothing and you make yourself deaf into the bargain.
I have known people take sixty grains of quinine in a day for a
bilious attack and turn it into a disease they only got through by
the skin of their teeth; but the prophylactic action of quinine is
its great one, as it only has power over malarial microbes at a
certain state of their development, - the fully matured microbe it
does not affect to any great degree - and therefore by taking it when
in a malarious district, say, in a dose of five grams a day, you
keep down the malaria which you are bound, even with every care, to
get into your system.
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