In India cholera is endemic and devastating; in this country we have scrofula, struma or tubercle. Neither respects persons, attacking rich and poor alike, the latter being particularly subject to tubercle for reasons which need no explanation in these days, when education stalks through the length and breadth of the land, dragging pianos, science, and art in its train.
We may therefore hope that the cure of “intermittents” will be performed on the same model; then will the alkaloid of cinchona descend from the position of anti-periodic and febrifuge to the level of a valuable tonic.
Just as the gardener must thoroughly fumigate his greenhouses with tobacco in order to rid his plants of aphides, so must these “bacilli” be attacked early and thoroughly, and then I feel sure that sea voyages would be attended with better results.
I am aware that one swallow does not make a summer; but, taking into consideration the palpable improvement mentioned above, only one deduction could fairly be made as to the beneficial effects of sea air.
The average time spent by me in any one place during the two years I had been in Burmah was about four months; the next three years this increased to seven; and the year afterwards it fell to a week.
A rolling stone may gather moss, but is almost sure to drop it again; in my second nomadic stage, a clear sweep was made of all that I had accumulated, and, by this time, the surface had probably become too slippery for any to cling to.
But it is not my intention to enter into the particulars of the next three years, for my book has already swollen like a mountain stream, and I have more to relate about the part of our dominions I was now leaving. The curtain falls; and, after the manner of the dramatic author, I must ask the reader to imagine an interval of nearly four years before it rises again upon the land of Gautama the contemplative.
And, as the audience are looking round the house, I may as well finish this chapter by forging a few connecting links.
Those mean “bacilli,” mixing with my pure blood, hurled me from a happy position and forced me to encounter not only cloudy weather, but a hurricane of angry passions dark as Erebus. The first cloud was comparatively no larger than a man’s hand; but it rapidly spread, soon blotting out the azure vault of heaven.