After Filing Them Off,
Inside Another Twenty-Four Hours They Were As Thick As Before.
The Australian specialists agreed that the malady was non-parasitic,
and that, therefore, it must be nervous.
It did not mend, and it
was impossible for me to continue the voyage. The only way I could
have continued it would have been by being lashed in my bunk, for in
my helpless condition, unable to clutch with my hands, I could not
have moved about on a small rolling boat. Also, I said to myself
that while there were many boats and many voyages, I had but one
pair of hands and one set of toe-nails. Still further, I reasoned
that in my own climate of California I had always maintained a
stable nervous equilibrium. So back I came.
Since my return I have completely recovered. And I have found out
what was the matter with me. I encountered a book by Lieutenant-
Colonel Charles E. Woodruff of the United States Army entitled
"Effects of Tropical Light on White Men." Then I knew. Later, I
met Colonel Woodruff, and learned that he had been similarly
afflicted. Himself an Army surgeon, seventeen Army surgeons sat on
his case in the Philippines, and, like the Australian specialists,
confessed themselves beaten. In brief, I had a strong
predisposition toward the tissue-destructiveness of tropical light.
I was being torn to pieces by the ultra-violet rays just as many
experimenters with the X-ray have been torn to pieces.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 302 of 305
Words from 79910 to 80161
of 80724
