emperature was now as much as 104
deg., and my faculties were naturally not at their quickest, I could not
help noticing the cheery look of the ward. There were flowers on the
tables, the patients were obviously well cared for, everything was
scrupulously clean, and the British nurses looked both efficient and
attractive. The scrupulous cleanliness, together with the latest and
most approved methods of treatment, were indeed a feature of the
hospital in all its aspects.

It was a short time afterwards that one of the doctors, after carefully
diagnosing my case, ordered me to the medical ward, where there would be
greater facilities for giving me a course of baths. In the medical ward
my treatment was as kind and as careful as formerly, but my new
surroundings had for the moment a rather depressing effect. I was just
able to realise that the cases around me were more serious than in the
private ward, and that both doctors and nurses were more grave and
intent on their work. I was soon, however, to become delirious again,
and for the next few days was more or less oblivious to my environment.
After a short time I became more alive to what was happening around me.
We typhoid patients had four cold baths daily, and those patients who in
their normal existence were unaccustomed to one warm bath a week were
somewhat inclined to rebel. This was amusing. My sense of humour was
reviving. The company here was certainly more mixed than in the private
ward--consisting as it did of every class and of every nationality, from
Montenegrin to Turk, but it was not on that account any the less
entertaining. Two or three berths away a brawny Scot of monster
dimensions, who was convalescent after an acute attack of rheumatism,
would every night before getting into bed say, with a certain naivete,
and without any sense of proportion, that he was going to his "little
nest." And yet people accuse Scotsmen of a lack of imagination. On
either side of me lay a typhoid patient--each delirious. The one on my
right hand imagined he was at home drinking beer in Plymouth, and the
one on my left, an Italian workman, would persistently call for his
boots. It seemed he wished to return to his work and did not think any
other article of dress necessary. The weather at the time was certainly
hot, and this may have suggested such a daring flaunting of the
conventions. It is curious that among typhoid patients this illusion of
doing some action without suffi