XII 
SOME AFRICAN MALADIES 
About one month after arriving in the country 
I had my first ague. There is a great shaking ac¬ 
companied by severe pains in back and limbs; 
this is followed by a burning fever and a head¬ 
ache so severe sometimes as to make the patient 
delirious—during the following night. If, by a 
free use of proper remedies, the return of the 
ague can be prevented on the third day, the 
patient is safe and with the exercise of proper 
precaution, will be up in a week. If the chill is 
not broken, the case becomes more and more 
serious. The ague will recur earlier every time 
it is repeated, and when only six hours intervene 
the case is well-nigh hopeless. Some attacks are 
so violent that the patient becomes unconscious 
at once and dies in a few hours. In this way 
Mrs. Phillips had died, except that she was de¬ 
lirious only. 
My wife and I got on very well for the first 
seven months. We were generally up three 
weeks out of the four and we fortunately had 
our agues in separate weeks so that one of us 
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