allow these over-worked women to get some sleep themselves. It was
written on the faces of the three amputation cases that they had had too
much morphia. And as this drug robs men of their appetite, keeps them
thin, and prevents their wounds from healing, it became my unpleasant
task to break them of it. This was only to be done by hardening one's
heart, by giving bromide and stout, and insisting on the egg and milk
that interspaced all meals. It is so easy to get a reputation for
kindness by being too complacent in giving way to requests for morphia.
It made one feel such an absolute brute to disregard the wistful
pleading eye, the hands that tugged at the mosquito curtains to show
they were awake, when, late at night, I made my evening round. But it
had to be done, and I fear the work and the sun and the tropics made
one's temper very short, particularly when it was only possible by
losing one's temper to preserve the indifference to these influences
that was necessary to complete the cure. It was very hard on them at the
time, especially as they were rotten with malaria and tick fever, in
addition to their wounds. But there were other ways in which one made it
up to them, if they did but know it. Nor did they see that quinine given
by the veins, so much more trouble to me and to the sister, was better
for them than the quinine tablet that was so easily swallowed, and so
ineffectual. Nor could they, one thought, always know that 606 had to be
given for tick fever, and that it was of no value save when given at the
height of fever, when they felt so miserable and so disinclined to be
disturbed.

There was Shelley, the Irishman, a big policeman from Johannesburg,
badly wounded in the thigh. He had been taken prisoner by the Germans
and remained so for three days, until our next advance found him
installed in the German hospital. His wound was so bad that amputation
alone was left to do. When the worst of the dressings was over and the