n RELATING TO HEALTH AND CLIMATE 17 
uses, such as ipecacuanha, bismuth, or chloroclyne, 
but the first, and to most people the best, medicine is 
a very hearty dose of castor oil. 
The sun is the great enemy with which the European 
settler must cope. Not only is there the direct danger 
of sunstroke, but there is the indirect danger of 
debility and nervous breakdown induced partly by the 
suns rays and partly by the factor which compensates 
for the same—the elevation. Not only is sunstroke 
in itself very serious, but the victim of a bad stroke is 
more often than not incapacitated from ever ,again 
standing the tropical sun for any length of time. This 
being so, each incoming settler can hardly be too 
careful. Let him wear a sun-helmet from 9 in the 
morning till 4 in the afternoon, even on a cold, cloudy 
day. Such helmets are rather disagreeable and un¬ 
comfortable at first, but after a few months’ hard 
wear they will gain in comfort what they lose in 
appearance. Again, if, as is generally the case during 
the hot weather, no coat is worn, a spine-pad is 
advisable; further, it may be borne in mind with 
advantage, that though a hairy chest peeping through 
an unbuttoned shirt is picturesque and gives the air of 
a pioneer, in reality the less surface exposed to the 
sun the better. 
With regard to nervous diseases, or, rather, a 
nervous state induced by the combination of sun and 
height, there certainly seems a tendency after two or 
three years’ continuous residence towards an irritability 
and a feeling of alternate elation and depression. A 
small grievance gets magnified into a deep wrong. A 
fortune appears in sight at one minute, ruin stares one 
in the face the next. A longing for England begins 
to stir—imaginary illnesses and dangers loom large. 
