ON THE EDGE OF THE 
PRIMEVAL FOREST 
CHAPTER I 
HOW I CAME TO BE A DOCTOR IN THE FOREST. THE 
LAND AND PEOPLE OF THE OGOWE 
I GAVE Up my position of professor in the University 
of Strasbourg, my literary work, and my organ-play- 
ing, in order to go as a doctor to Equatorial Africa. 
How did that come about ? 
I had read about the physical miseries of the natives 
in the virgin forests ; I had heard about them from 
missionaries, and the more I thought about it the 
stranger it seemed to me that we Europeans trouble 
ourselves so little about the great humanitarian task 
which offers itself to us in far-off lands. The parable 
of Dives and Lazarus seemed to me to have been 
spoken directly of us ! We are Dives, for, through the 
advances of medical science, we now know a great deal 
about disease and pain, and' have innumerable means 
of fighting them : yet we take as a matter of course the 
incalculable advantages which this new wealth gives 
us ! Out there in the colonies, however, sits wretched 
Lazarus, the coloured folk, who suffers from illness 
