36 III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES 
any one in their village who can read, but in the end 
I am never sure that they do not empty the bottle 
at one go, and eat the ointment, and rub the powders 
into their skin. I get, on the average, from thirty to 
forty people a day to treat, and the chief complaints 
are skin diseases of various sorts, malaria, the sleeping 
sickness, leprosy, elephantiasis, heart complaints, sup- 
purating injuries to the bones (osteomyelitis), and 
tropical dysentery. To stop the discharge from the 
sores the natives cover the place with powder made 
from the bark of a certain tree. This hardens gradually 
into a paste which hinders the escape of the pus and, 
of course, makes the case much worse. 
From the list of the complaints which come oftenest 
to be treated the itch (scabies) must not be omitted. It 
causes the blacks very great distress, and I have had 
patients who had not slept for weeks because they had 
been so tortured by the itching ; many had scratched 
their whole body till the blood came, so that there 
were festering sores to treat as well as scabies. The 
treatment is very simple. The patient first washes in 
the river, and is then rubbed all over, however tall he 
is, with an ointment compounded of flower of sulphur 
{sulphur depur alum), crude palm oil, remains of oil 
from sardine tins, and soft soap. In a tin which once 
contained sterilised milk he receives a quantity of this 
ointment with which to give himself at home two more 
rubbings. The success of this is wonderful, the itching 
ceasing to worry on the second day, and this ointment 
has in a very few weeks made me famous far and wide. 
The natives have great confidence in the white man’s 
medicine, a result which is partly, at any rate, due to 
the self-sacrificing spirit and the wise understanding 
