as
finally prostrated with illness myself. At three o'clock on the night
of Tuesday, July 26, I awoke in a chill, and before morning I had all
the symptoms of calenture, with a temperature of 104.

Calenture, or Cuban malarial fever, comes on rather suddenly with a
chill of greater or less severity and a violent headache. The
temperature frequently rises to 105, and the fever, instead of being
intermittent, runs continuously with little, if any, diurnal variation.
If the attack is not a very severe one the headache gradually subsides;
the temperature falls to 102 or 103, and in the course of three or four
days the disease begins to yield to treatment. In some cases the fever
is interrupted by a second chill, followed by another rise of
temperature; but, as a rule, there is only one chill, and the fever,
after running from four days to a week, gradually abates. The treatment
most favored in Santiago consists of the administration of a large dose
of sulphate of magnesia at the outset, followed up with quinine and
calomel, or perhaps quinine and sulphur. The patient is not allowed to
take any nourishment while the fever lasts, and if he keeps quiet,
avoids sudden changes of temperature, and does not fret, he generally
recovers in a week or ten days. He suffers from languor and prostration,
however, for a fortnight or more, and if he overeats, moves about in the
sunshine, or exposes himself to the night air, he is liable to have
another chill, with a relapse, in which the fever is higher and more
obstinate, perhaps, than at first. Under ordinary circumstances the
fever is not dangerous, and the worst thing about it is the wretched,
half-dead, half-alive condition in which it leaves one. My attack was
not a very severe one, and in the course of ten days I was able to walk
about again; but the first time I went out into the sunshine I had a
relapse, which reduced me to such a state of weakness and helplessness
that I could no longer care for myself, and had either to leave the
country or go into one of the crowded Santiago hospitals and run the
risk of being sent as a "suspect" to the yellow-fever camp near Siboney.
Upon the advice of Dr. Egan, I decided to take the first steamer for New
York, and sailed from Santiago on August 12, after a Cuban campaign of
only seven weeks.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN

It is my purpose, in the concluding chapters of this volume, to review
as fully and dispassionately as