Wada And Henry, However, Were Tougher Patients With Which To Deal.
In The First Place, Wada Got In A Bad Funk.
He was of the firm
conviction that his star had set and that the Solomons would receive
his bones.
He saw that life about him was cheap. At Penduffryn he
saw the ravages of dysentery, and, unfortunately for him, he saw one
victim carried out on a strip of galvanized sheet-iron and dumped
without coffin or funeral into a hole in the ground. Everybody had
fever, everybody had dysentery, everybody had everything. Death was
common. Here to-day and gone to-morrow - and Wada forgot all about
to-day and made up his mind that to-morrow had come.
He was careless of his ulcers, neglected to sublimate them, and by
uncontrolled scratching spread them all over his body. Nor would he
follow instructions with fever, and, as a result, would be down five
days at a time, when a day would have been sufficient. Henry, who
is a strapping giant of a man, was just as bad. He refused point
blank to take quinine, on the ground that years before he had had
fever and that the pills the doctor gave him were of different size
and colour from the quinine tablets I offered him. So Henry joined
Wada.
But I fooled the pair of them, and dosed them with their own
medicine, which was faith-cure. They had faith in their funk that
they were going to die. I slammed a lot of quinine down their
throats and took their temperature. It was the first time I had
used my medicine-chest thermometer, and I quickly discovered that it
was worthless, that it had been produced for profit and not for
service. If I had let on to my two patients that the thermometer
did not work, there would have been two funerals in short order.
Their temperature I swear was 105 degrees. I solemnly made one and
then the other smoke the thermometer, allowed an expression of
satisfaction to irradiate my countenance, and joyfully told them
that their temperature was 94 degrees. Then I slammed more quinine
down their throats, told them that any sickness or weakness they
might experience would be due to the quinine, and left them to get
well. And they did get well, Wada in spite of himself. If a man
can die through a misapprehension, is there any immorality in making
him live through a misapprehension?
Commend me the white race when it comes to grit and surviving. One
of our two Japanese and both our Tahitians funked and had to be
slapped on the back and cheered up and dragged along by main
strength toward life. Charmian and Martin took their afflictions
cheerfully, made the least of them, and moved with calm certitude
along the way of life. When Wada and Henry were convinced that they
were going to die, the funeral atmosphere was too much for Tehei,
who prayed dolorously and cried for hours at a time. Martin, on the
other hand, cursed and got well, and Charmian groaned and made plans
for what she was going to do when she got well again.
Charmian had been raised a vegetarian and a sanitarian. Her Aunt
Netta, who brought her up and who lived in a healthful climate, did
not believe in drugs. Neither did Charmian. Besides, drugs
disagreed with her. Their effects were worse than the ills they
were supposed to alleviate. But she listened to the argument in
favour of quinine, accepted it as the lesser evil, and in
consequence had shorter, less painful, and less frequent attacks of
fever. We encountered a Mr. Caulfeild, a missionary, whose two
predecessors had died after less than six months' residence in the
Solomons. Like them he had been a firm believer in homeopathy,
until after his first fever, whereupon, unlike them, he made a grand
slide back to allopathy and quinine, catching fever and carrying on
his Gospel work.
But poor Wada! The straw that broke the cook's back was when
Charmian and I took him along on a cruise to the cannibal island of
Malaita, in a small yacht, on the deck of which the captain had been
murdered half a year before. Kai-kai means to eat, and Wada was
sure he was going to be kai-kai'd. We went about heavily armed, our
vigilance was unremitting, and when we went for a bath in the mouth
of a fresh-water stream, black boys, armed with rifles, did sentry
duty about us. We encountered English war vessels burning and
shelling villages in punishment for murders. Natives with prices on
their heads sought shelter on board of us. Murder stalked abroad in
the land. In out-of-they-way places we received warnings from
friendly savages of impending attacks. Our vessel owed two heads to
Malaita, which were liable to be collected any time. Then to cap it
all, we were wrecked on a reef, and with rifles in one hand warned
the canoes of wreckers off while with the other hand we toiled to
save the ship. All of which was too much for Wada, who went daffy,
and who finally quitted the Snark on the island of Ysabel, going
ashore for good in a driving rain-storm, between two attacks of
fever, while threatened with pneumonia. If he escapes being kai-
kai'd, and if he can survive sores and fever which are riotous
ashore, he can expect, if he is reasonably lucky, to get away from
that place to the adjacent island in anywhere from six to eight
weeks. He never did think much of my medicine, despite the fact
that I successfully and at the first trail pulled two aching teeth
for him.
The Snark has been a hospital for months, and I confess that we are
getting used to it. At Meringe Lagoon, where we careened and
cleaned the Snark's copper, there were times when only one man of us
was able to go into the water, while the three white men on the
plantation ashore were all down with fever.
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