King Teddy, The Fearless
The names of tropical diseases mentioned in this rhyme were given to the author by a young doctor who thought they could not be made to rhyme.
King Teddy has much courage to fight both beasts and men
With pistols and with broadswords and with the mighty pen.
And now in Afric jungles he's busy fighting fleas,
Mosquitoes, and big tigers and monstrous bumble bees;
Huge elephants, gorillas, and awful Guinea-worms,
Sloughing phagedaena, and sleeping sickness germs,
Tinea imbricata, piedra and goundou,
Malaria and the ainhum, pinta and the sprue,
Chyluria, mycetoma, leprosy and yaws,
Afric dysentery and maybe lions' claws,
Bubonic plague and dengue and dreadful tropic-boils,
Fevers black and yellow and sometimes serpents' coils,
Tinea Madagascar, Dhobie itch, screw worms,
Beri-beri and craw-craw and all the Afric-germs;
With dread sun-traumatism, and abscess of the liver,
Yet none of these great terrors can make King Teddy shiver.
