You Should Continue The Quinine, Taking It In Five-Grain
Doses, Up To Fifteen To Twenty Grains A Day For A Week After Any
Attack Of Fever, But You Must Omit The Opium Pill.
The great thing
in West Africa is to keep up your health to a good level, that will
enable you to resist fever, and it is exceedingly difficult for most
people to do this, because of the difficulty of getting exercise and
good food.
But do what you may it is almost certain you will get
fever during a residence of more than six months on the Coast, and
the chances are two to one on the Gold Coast that you will die of
it. But, without precautions, you will probably have it within a
fortnight of first landing, and your chances of surviving are almost
nil. With precautions, in the Rivers and on the S.W. Coast your
touch of fever may be a thing inferior in danger and discomfort to a
bad cold in England.
Yet remember, before you elect to cast your lot in with the West
Coasters, that 85 per cent. of them die of fever or return home with
their health permanently wrecked. Also remember that there is no
getting acclimatised to the Coast. There are, it is true, a few men
out there who, although they have been resident in West Africa for
years, have never had fever, but you can count them up on the
fingers of one hand. There is another class who have been out for
twelve months at a time, and have not had a touch of fever; these
you want the fingers of your two hands to count, but no more. By
far the largest class is the third, which is made up of those who
have a slight dose of fever once a fortnight, and some day,
apparently for no extra reason, get a heavy dose and die of it. A
very considerable class is the fourth - those who die within a
fortnight to a month of going ashore.
The fate of a man depends solely on his power of resisting the so-
called malaria, not in his system becoming inured to it. The first
class of men that I have cited have some unknown element in their
constitutions that renders them immune. With the second class the
power of resistance is great, and can be renewed from time to time
by a spell home in a European climate. In the third class the state
is that of cumulative poisoning; in the fourth of acute poisoning.
Let the new-comer who goes to the Coast take the most cheerful view
of these statements and let him regard himself as preordained to be
one of the two most favoured classes. Let him take every care short
of getting frightened, which is as deadly as taking no care at all,
and he may - I sincerely hope he will - survive; for a man who has got
the grit in him to go and fight in West Africa for those things
worth fighting for - duty, honour and gold - is a man whose death is a
dead loss to his country.
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