34 III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES 
6 p.m. there are often some who have not yet been 
seen, and they have to be put off till the next day. To 
treat them by lamplight cannot be thought of because 
of the mosquitoes and the risk of fever infection. 
Each patient is given, on leaving, a round piece of 
cardboard on a string of fibre, on which is the number 
under which his name, his complaint, and the medicines 
given him are recorded in my register, so that if he 
comes back I have only to turn to the page to learn all 
about the case, and be spared a time-wasting second 
diagnosis. The register records also all the bottles, 
boxes, bandages, etc., which were given ; only with 
this means of control is it possible to demand the 
return of these things, which in about half the cases we 
do get back. How valuable bottles and boxes are 
away from the civilised world only he can rightly 
estimate who has had to get medicines ready in the 
primeval forest for patients to take home with them ! 
The atmosphere is so damp here that medicines, 
which in Europe can be wrapped in paper or distri- 
buted in cardboard boxes, can only be kept in good 
condition in a corked bottle or in a tin box which 
closes perfectly. I had not taken sufficient account of 
this, and I found myself in such difficulty about it that 
I had to fall out with patients who said they had for- 
gotten or lost a tin box. My friends in Europe were 
entreated by every post to collect from their acquaint- 
ances bottles big and little, glass tubes with corks, 
and tin boxes of all sorts and sizes. How I look for- 
ward to the day when I shall have a sufficient supply 
of such things ! 
The round cardboard ticket with the number on it 
most of the patients wear round their neck, together with 
