As Soon As I Had Done I Went Outside, And Getting Some
Of The Many Surrounding Ladies To Hold Bush-Lights, I Examined The
Case.
The whole hand was a mass of yellow pus, streaked with
sanies, large ulcers were burrowing into the fore-arm, while in the
arm-pit was a big abscess.
I opened the abscess at once, and then
the old lady frightened me nearly out of my wits by gently
subsiding, I thought dying, but I soon found out merely going to
sleep. I then washed the abscess well out, and having got a lot of
baked plantains, I made a big poultice of them, mixed with boiling
water and more Condy in the tub, and laid her arm right in this; and
propping her up all round and covering her over with cloths I
requisitioned from her son, I left her to have her nap while I went
into the history of the case, which was that some forty-eight hours
ago she had been wading along the bank, catching crawfish, and had
been stung by "a fish like a snake"; so I presume the ulcers were an
old-standing palaver. The hand had been a good deal torn by the
creature, and the pain and swelling had been so great she had not
had a minute's sleep since. As soon as the poultice got chilled I
took her arm out and cleaned it again, and wound it round with
dressing, and had her ladyship carried bodily, still asleep, into
her hut, and after rousing her up, giving her a dose of that fine
preparation, pil.
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