232 
MADAGASCAR. 
anxious mothers awaited us with their infants, 
bared as to the arm, and ready prepared for the 
life-preserving incision. The real secret of the 
“ good arms ” was, however, not so much con¬ 
nected with the skill with which the operator 
used his improvised lancet, as with the real 
excellence of the lymph with which the consul 
supplied him. 
It is well for all who visit this island, whether 
as travellers or to reside for longer or shorter 
periods, to provide themselves with copious sup¬ 
plies of quinine, and such preparations as Eno’s 
Fruit Salt or Lamplough’s Pyretic Saline. The 
use of these latter will often ward off, or con¬ 
siderably weaken, an attack of fever; and as 
remedies for the abnormal heat of the blood, 
which inevitably results in the case of fresh 
arrivals in the tropics, they are, as I can testify 
from long experience, an invaluable, and, as far 
as I know, a unique specific. I also found 
a frequent demand for common court plaster, 
which, with lancets, a supply of vaccine, and 
plenty of bandages, as well as a good surgical 
knife or two, and a quantity of nitrate of silver, 
and a well-filled case of Brown’s Chlorodyne, 
for use in any emergency or sudden visitation 
of dysentery or spasms of the bowels, the result 
generally of drinking immoderately of cold water 
infected with fever germs, should form the chief 
