All my plans were made to lay
up the Snark in Fiji and get away on the first steamer to Australia
and professional M.D.'s. In the meantime, in my amateur M.D. way, I
did my best. I read through all the medical works on board. Not a
line nor a word could I find descriptive of my affliction. I
brought common horse-sense to bear on the problem. Here were
malignant and excessively active ulcers that were eating me up.
There was an organic and corroding poison at work. Two things I
concluded must be done. First, some agent must be found to destroy
the poison. Secondly, the ulcers could not possibly heal from the
outside in; they must heal from the inside out. I decided to fight
the poison with corrosive sublimate. The very name of it struck me
as vicious. Talk of fighting fire with fire! I was being consumed
by a corrosive poison, and it appealed to my fancy to fight it with
another corrosive poison. After several days I alternated dressings
of corrosive sublimate with dressings of peroxide of hydrogen. And
behold, by the time we reached Fiji four of the five ulcers were
healed, while the remaining one was no bigger than a pea.
I now felt fully qualified to treat yaws. Likewise I had a
wholesome respect for them. Not so the rest of the crew of the
Snark. In their case, seeing was not believing. One and all, they
had seen my dreadful predicament; and all of them, I am convinced,
had a subconscious certitude that their own superb constitutions and
glorious personalities would never allow lodgment of so vile a
poison in their carcasses as my anaemic constitution and mediocre
personality had allowed to lodge in mine. At Port Resolution, in
the New Hebrides, Martin elected to walk barefooted in the bush and
returned on board with many cuts and abrasions, especially on his
shins.
"You'd better be careful," I warned him. "I'll mix up some
corrosive sublimate for you to wash those cuts with. An ounce of
prevention, you know."
But Martin smiled a superior smile. Though he did not say so. I
nevertheless was given to understand that he was not as other men (I
was the only man he could possibly have had reference to), and that
in a couple of days his cuts would be healed. He also read me a
dissertation upon the peculiar purity of his blood and his
remarkable healing powers. I felt quite humble when he was done
with me. Evidently I was different from other men in so far as
purity of blood was concerned.
Nakata, the cabin-boy, while ironing one day, mistook the calf of
his leg for the ironing-block and accumulated a burn three inches in
length and half an inch wide.
