unteers and Army doctors the Regulars. There was also a
considerable number of the inhabitants of Ladysmith, not alone women
and children, but men. Hence the reason that it got christened Camp
Funk by the inhabitants that remained in the town. Situated on the
flat of the plain, on a level with the river banks, it was by no means
an ideal situation for a fever hospital, but still it was a great
thing to be out of the way of these irregularly dropping shells and to
_know_ one was away from them. "Long Tom," on Bulwana, shook the very
ground when he fired, and, with the other guns there, often got on the
nerves of many of the patients to a trying extent, and the Boers, as a
rule, started firing at sunrise, just about the time when the poor
devil who has tossed and turned through the long hours of the hot
night in fevered restlessness now from sheer exhaustion is just
sinking into sleep, to be startled by the terrific bang above his head
and the rush of the shell, like the tearing of a yacht's mainsail, as
it speeds on its arched course towards the devoted town.

A curious passive fight the patient settles down to, with a fatal
little thermometer keeping score and marking the game--a sort of
tug-of-war between doctors and Disease. The ground is marked in
degrees from 98.4 to 106, the former being normal temperature, the
later the point at which, as a rule, disease wins the game.

Take the case of a fellow the author knows intimately. He had held out
too long without going to hospital, putting down his weakness,
lassitude, and general feeling of extreme cheapness to the climate
instead of the real cause, with the result that he started on the real
struggle with a temperature of 104.8. At the very start Disease had
pulled him over nastily close to his line, and was still pulling him
over, as his temperature was rising point by point. There are various
methods of treatment--with him they fought it with a drug called
phenacetin, and to the lay mind a wonderful drug it appears. It is not
effective with every one. A man in the next bed to him might have been
taking breadcrumbs for all effect it produced. With him, however, it
worked like clockwork. No sooner was a five-grain dose swallowed than
the temperature stopped in its upward course. Then, gradually, like in
a good Turkish bath, the pores of his skin opened, and a most complete
and profuse perspiration ensued, which was allowed to go on for a
couple of hours. Then, with be