from ambulance or mule waggon. There was no need to seek the cause in
the scrap of paper that was the sick report. All who ran could read it
in the blanched lips, the grey-green pallor of their faces, the
jaundiced eye, the hurried breathing. Thereupon came three days'
struggle with Azrael's pale shape before the blackwater gave place to
the natural colour again, or until the secreting mechanism gave up the
contest altogether and the Destroying Angel settled firmly on his prey.
At first, if there was no vomiting, it was easy to ply the hourly drinks
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