HOSPITAL HAPPENINGS 
147 
goes, promote in a striking way the growth of new skin 
when ulcers are healing. 
Before the war I had begun to make a small charge 
for the medicine to those patients who seemed not to be 
absolutely poor, and this brought in something like 200 
francs {£ 8 ) a month. Even though it was only a frac- 
tion of the real value of the medicines dispensed, it was 
something. Now there is no money in the country, and 
I have to treat the natives almost entirely for nothing. 
Of the whites, many who have been prevented by the 
war from going home, have now been four or five years 
under the equator and are thoroughly exhausted, so 
that they have to resort to the doctor “ for repairs,” 
as we say on the Ogowe. Such patients are sometimes 
with us for weeks, coming often two and three together 
Then I let them use my bedroom and sleep myself in 
a part of the verandah which has been protected from 
mosquitoes by wire-netting. That is, however, no 
great self-denial, for there is more air there than inside. 
The recovery of the patients is often due much less to 
my medicines than to the excellent invalid diet provided 
by the doctor’s wife — fortunately we still have a good 
supply of tins of condensed milk for our patients — and 
I have for some time had to take care that sick people 
do not come up here from Cape Lopez for the sake of 
the diet instead of letting themselves be treated by the 
doctor there — when there is one. With many of my 
patients I have become quite intimate, and from con- 
versation with those who stay here a long time I am 
always learning something fresh about the country and 
the problem of its colonisation. 
