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on health read by Dr. STRACHAN, Chief Medical Officer of Lagos, at 

 Liverpool. A short course of popular lectures on malaria and dysen- 

 tery has been delivered in Lagos by Dr. BEST. These lectures, in 

 which the use of technical terms and phraseology has been carefully 

 avoided, have created a much larger amount of interest, and been far 

 better attended, than one could have dared to hope for. It is con- 

 templated that teachers in public schools, who have diligently attended 

 Dr. BEST'S course, should impart to their scholars the rudiments of 

 the malarial doctrine in a health class, which will be examined by an 

 inspector in much the same way as any other school class, and will 

 count equally with reading and writing for the distribution of the 

 school grant. The Chief Medical Officer is now preparing a general 

 course of lectures on sanitary subjects ; and it is intended that these 

 shall be repeated at different places, in the native language, by one or 

 more of the medical officers that are natives of the country. It is 

 certain that by these means, and by an intelligent appreciation of the 

 vast importance of the subject to this country, a degree of interest in 

 the question has been created in the public mind here that one could 

 not have expected. It is very important that people should at the 

 outset generally understand and believe the theory of malaria. Belief 

 has become more general than one could have foreseen. It is 

 gradually becoming understood. 



In active operations the greatest attention is being given (i)to the 

 prevention of malaria by the administration of quinine ; and (2) to 

 the use of gauze netting ; while (3) at the same time the mosquito is 

 attacked in his breeding ground. 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF QUININE. 



It appears highly probable that at least as much can be done here 

 by the use of quinine as a preventative as by the employment of mos- 

 quito netting. 



The greater number of Government officers take quinine regularly, 

 but, of course, so long as taking quinine is not compulsory there will 

 always be a residuum of men that either because they cannot tolerate 

 quinine, or for some other reason, will not use it as a preventative of 

 fever. There are some half a dozen such in this service. This remedy 

 is as much required for native as European officers. In 1900, 79 cases 

 of fever in European officers, of an average duration of 4.5 days, were 

 treated by the medical officers, as against 149 cases of an average 



