ks
of tea and water and medicine. But once deadly and exhausting vomiting
had begun, one could no longer feed the victim by the mouth. Then came
the keener struggle for life, for fluid was essential and had to be
given by other ways and means. Into the soft folds of the skin of the
arm-pits, breast and flanks we ran in salt solution by the pint. The
veins of the arms we brought into service, that we might pour in this
vitalising fluid. Day and night the fight goes on for three days, until
it is won or lost. Here again, as in tick fever, we use the preparation
606, for which we are indebted to the great Ehrlich. Champagne is a
great stand-by. So well recognised is the latter remedy that all old
hands at tropical travel take with them a case of "bubbly water" for
such occasions as these. Blessed morphia, too, brings ease of vomiting
and is a priceless boon.

You ask me the cause of this disease, and I have to admit that among the
authorities themselves there are no settled convictions. Some hold--and
for my part I am with them--that the attack is caused by quinine given
in too large a dose to a subject who is rotten with malaria. But there
are others who maintain that it is a malarial manifestation only, and
that the big dose of quinine, which seems to some to precipitate the
attack, is only a coincidence. Be that as it may, there is little
difference in the treatment adopted by either school. Death achieves his
victory as frequently with one as with another. Certain it is that, to
the common mind, quinine is the reputed cause and is avoided in large
doses by men who have once had blackwater, or who are in that low rotten
state that predisposes to it. In one point all agree, that one must be
saturated with malaria before blackwater can develop. So great is the
aversion shown by some men to the big doses of quinine as laid down by
regulations, that men have often refused to take their quinine. Others,
too, who have protested at first, take their quinine ration only to find
themselves in the grip of this disease within twelve hours. Such a case
was a Frenchman named Canarie (and the colour of his face, upon
admission, did not belie his name), who had been treated for blackwater
fever by the great Koch in Uganda many years before, and had been warned
by him against big doses of quinine. That evening he was on my hands,
fortunately soon to recover, and to win a prolonged convalescent leave
out of this rain to the sunny and no