"And have you had them?" Martin demanded, in the soul of him quite
shocked that a Church of England missionary could possess so vulgar
an affliction.
Mr. Drew nodded his head and added that not only had he had them,
but at that moment he was doctoring several.
"What do you use on them?" Martin asked like a flash.
My heart almost stood still waiting the answer. By that answer my
professional medical prestige stood or fell. Martin, I could see,
was quite sure it was going to fall. And then the answer - O blessed
answer!
"Corrosive sublimate," said Mr. Drew.
Martin gave in handsomely, I'll admit, and I am confident that at
that moment, if I had asked permission to pull one of his teeth, he
would not have denied me.
All white men in the Solomons catch yaws, and every cut or abrasion
practically means another yaw. Every man I met had had them, and
nine out of ten had active ones. There was but one exception, a
young fellow who had been in the islands five months, who had come
down with fever ten days after he arrived, and who had since then
been down so often with fever that he had had neither time nor
opportunity for yaws.
Every one on the Snark except Charmian came down with yaws. Hers
was the same egotism that Japan and Kansas had displayed. She
ascribed her immunity to the pureness of her blood, and as the days
went by she ascribed it more often and more loudly to the pureness
of her blood. Privately I ascribed her immunity to the fact that,
being a woman, she escaped most of the cuts and abrasions to which
we hard-working men were subject in the course of working the Snark
around the world. I did not tell her so. You see, I did not wish
to bruise her ego with brutal facts. Being an M.D., if only an
amateur one, I knew more about the disease than she, and I knew that
time was my ally. But alas, I abused my ally when it dealt a
charming little yaw on the shin. So quickly did I apply antiseptic
treatment, that the yaw was cured before she was convinced that she
had one. Again, as an M.D., I was without honour on my own vessel;
and, worse than that, I was charged with having tried to mislead her
into the belief that she had had a yaw. The pureness of her blood
was more rampant than ever, and I poked my nose into my navigation
books and kept quiet. And then came the day. We were cruising
along the coast of Malaita at the time.
"What's that abaft your ankle-bone?" said I.
"Nothing," said she.
"All right," said I; "but put some corrosive sublimate on it just
the same. And some two or three weeks from now, when it is well and
you have a scar that you will carry to your grave, just forget about
the purity of your blood and your ancestral history and tell me what
you think about yaws anyway."
It was as large as a silver dollar, that yaw, and it took all of
three weeks to heal.
