314 THROUGH ANGOLA 



are best left unpricked, but if so large as likely 

 to burst, should be drained through sound skin 

 with a small needle a painless process. 



The nature of the layman's medicine-chest is 

 a difficulty, but a Burroughs & Welcome or Park 

 Davies traveller's medicine case is useful, and 

 some drugs are invaluable. Take enough quinine 

 (the hydrochloride salt is the best) to give every 

 white man one 5 - grain tabloid a day (for pre- 

 vention) ; thrice this quantity as a reserve for 

 treatment ; and an equal amount for every twenty 

 of your men who, though much more immume 

 to malaria than Europeans, suffer from it also. 

 Take a bottle of fifty aspirin tablets for every two 

 months of the trip, a bottle of astringent pills, 

 and a suitable amount of your favourite pur- 

 gative. 



I do not encourage my carriers to like drugs. 

 The African has a vicious taste in these matters ; 

 they delight in any medicinal concoction, and 

 your medicine chest need not be normally raided, 

 as there are many suitable drugs which the natives 

 know and use. The most concentrated pur- 

 gative is croton oil, an urgent stimulus even to 

 the African's interior, in drop doses. There are 

 times when the white man must indeed be the 

 physician and saver of his black brother in snake 

 bite, wounds, injuries, and drowning. 



The venom of mambas and cobras acts quickly 

 on the nervous system, causing drowsiness, vomit- 

 ing, paralysis, and death ; that of the adder acts 

 more slowly, clotting the blood and damaging 

 the blood vessels, but recovery is equally slow. 



