The Third, Or Acute Form, Dr. Anderson Describes Thus.
After Remarking That The Grave Symptoms Set In Quite Unexpectedly,
And
Go on rapidly increasing, he says:- "The patient now can lie
down no longer; he sits up in bed and
Tosses restlessly from one
position to another, and, with wrinkled brow, staring and anxious
eyes, dusky skin, blue, parted lips, dilated nostrils, throbbing
neck, and labouring chest, presents a picture of the most terrible
distress that the worst of diseases can inflict. There is no
intermission even for a moment, and the physician, here almost
powerless, can do little more than note the failing pulse and
falling temperature, and wait for the moment when the brain,
paralysed by the carbonised blood, shall become insensible, and
allow the dying man to pass his last moments in merciful
unconsciousness." {15}
The next morning, after riding nine miles through a quagmire, under
grand avenues of cryptomeria, and noticing with regret that the
telegraph poles ceased, we reached Yusowa, a town of 7000 people,
in which, had it not been for provoking delays, I should have slept
instead of at Innai, and found that a fire a few hours previously
had destroyed seventy houses, including the yadoya at which I
should have lodged. We had to wait two hours for horses, as all
were engaged in moving property and people. The ground where the
houses had stood was absolutely bare of everything but fine black
ash, among which the kuras stood blackened, and, in some instances,
slightly cracked, but in all unharmed. Already skeletons of new
houses were rising. No life had been lost except that of a tipsy
man, but I should probably have lost everything but my money.
LETTER XX - (Continued)
Lunch in Public - A Grotesque Accident - Police Inquiries - Man or
Woman? - A Melancholy Stare - A Vicious Horse - An Ill-favoured Town -
A Disappointment - A Torii.
Yusowa is a specially objectionable-looking place. I took my
lunch - a wretched meal of a tasteless white curd made from beans,
with some condensed milk added to it - in a yard, and the people
crowded in hundreds to the gate, and those behind, being unable to
see me, got ladders and climbed on the adjacent roofs, where they
remained till one of the roofs gave way with a loud crash, and
precipitated about fifty men, women, and children into the room
below, which fortunately was vacant. Nobody screamed - a noteworthy
fact - and the casualties were only a few bruises. Four policemen
then appeared and demanded my passport, as if I were responsible
for the accident, and failing, like all others, to read a
particular word upon it, they asked me what I was travelling for,
and on being told "to learn about the country," they asked if I was
making a map! Having satisfied their curiosity they disappeared,
and the crowd surged up again in fuller force. The Transport Agent
begged them to go away, but they said they might never see such a
sight again!
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