MEDICAL EXPERIENCES. 
227 
involuntary quakings of the patient. The bright 
sunshine, lighting up the hills in the distance 
with floods of golden brightness, or bathing the 
very verandah of my house, a few feet only from 
my pillow, with an intensity suggestive of the 
furnace “ heated seven times hotter than before,” 
only appeared a garish mockery and delusion of 
the senses. I crouch down beneath the mass of 
coverings for warmth, but in vain; no relief 
comes to the terrible iciness which seems to have 
penetrated to the very marrow of the bones. 
Then follow hours of burning and consuming 
heat. The blankets have been cast off; a sense 
of suffocation oppresses the victim, who feels as 
if his poor body is undergoing the initial stages 
of cremation. Utter prostration now intervenes, 
and the weary sufferer is blessed perhaps with a 
few hours of fitful and uneasy sleep, broken by 
incoherent mutterings and constant changes of 
posture. Then again comes the cold stage, during 
which anodyne and purgative medicines are freely 
used, and quinine administered frequently, and 
in doses which an English doctor would, I fear, 
think dangerously liberal. This goes on for weeks, 
or even months, and at length, the fever having 
worn itself out, quits its miserable and dejected 
subject, who has probably become prematurely 
aged and even grey in a few weeks. This is 
really the critical period in the life of the patient, 
