e "machela" above the ground, he is harmless. But woe betide the
tired soldier who attempts to escape the tropical rain by taking refuge
on the floor. In sleep he is attacked, and when his blind assailant is
full of blood he drops off; so the soldier may never know that he has
been bitten. I got twelve cases alone from one company of the
Rhodesians, who sheltered in a native village near Kissaki. Of course,
not every tick is infected, and for that we have to be very grateful. At
the height of the fever the spirillum appears in the blood as an
attenuated, worm-like creature, actively struggling and squirming among
the blood corpuscles. A drop of blood taken from the ear shows hundreds
of these young snakes beneath the microscope. For the cure we are again
indebted to that excellent Hun bacteriologist Ehrlich, who gave us
.606--a strong arsenical preparation that we dissolve in a pint of salt
solution, and inject into the veins at the height of the paroxysm of
fever. This definitely destroys the spirillum, and no further attacks of
fever result; but this injection, once its work is done, does not confer
immunity from other attacks. It is typical of the Hun and his
anti-Semitic feelings that Ehrlich, the most distinguished of German
scientists, perhaps, after Koch, has never received the due reward of
all the distinction he has conferred on German medicine, for the offence
that he was a Jew. We should have honoured him, as we have done Jenner
or Lister.

Relapsing, or _Rueckfall_ fever, as the Germans call it, was one of the
common dodges used by them to deceive the ingenuous British doctor. For
the subtle Hun prisoner knew that, if he pretended to this disease, it
would win him at least a week in the grateful comfort of a hospital, and
perchance the ministering joys conferred by German nursing sisters,
until the expected relapse did not occur; then the British doctor,
realising the extent of his deception, would thrust these shameless
malingerers to the cold comfort of the prison camp.

How is it, you might ask me, that there are any natives left, if
tropical Africa is so full of such beastly diseases as this? Is it that
the native is naturally immune, or is it that the white man is of such a
precious quality that he alone is attacked by these parasites and
poisonous biting flies? The fact is that the native is affected also,
and in childhood chiefly, so that the infant mortality in many native
tribes is very high. And t