The Wasawahili also calculate their agricultural seasons from the stars called Kilímia, a name probably derived from Ku lima, to plough. I believe them to be Pleiades, but my sudden departure from the coast prevented my making especial inquiries. When this constellation is in the west at night the peasants say, ‘Kilímia, if it sets during the rains, rises in fair weather,’ and vice versâ. Also Kilímia appearing in the east is a signal for the agriculturist to prepare his land.
Section 3.
Climate continued—Notes on the Nosology of Zanzibar—Effects on Strangers.
The climate of Zanzibar Island is better than that of the adjacent continent. Here many white residents have escaped severe fever; but upon the coast the disastrous fate of Captain Owen’s surveyors, the loss of life on board our cruisers, and the many deaths of the ‘Mombas Mission,’ even though, finding the sea-board dangerous, they built houses on the hills which lead to the mountain region of Usumbara, prove that malaria is as active in eastern as in western Africa. Colonel Hamerton once visited the Pangani river during the month of August: of his 19 men, three died, and all but one suffered severely. Perhaps we should not find a similar mortality in the present day, when the lancet has been laid aside for the preventive treatment by quinine and tonics. It has, however, been asserted that the prophylactic use of the alkaloid, which was such a success in western Africa, did not prove equally valuable on the eastern coast.
Yet Zanzibar, with its double seasons and its uniformly heated and humid atmosphere, accords ill, even where healthiest, with the irritable temperament of northern races. Here, contrary to the rule of Madagascar, the lowlands over which the fresh sea-breeze plays are the only parts where the white stranger can land and live; the interior is non habitabilis æstu. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, called upon in March, 1844, by Sir George Arthur, governor of Bombay, to report upon the island, wrote in September of the same year, ‘The climate of the [insular] coast is not unhealthy for Europeans, but it is impossible for white men to live in the interior of the island, the vegetation being rank and appearing always to be going on; and generally fever contracted in the interior is fatal to Europeans.’ Colonel Sykes (loco cit.) questions this assertion as being ‘contrary to all other testimony.’ Every traveller, however, knows it to be correct. As in the lovely climates of the Congo River and the South Sea Islands, corporal lassitude leads to indolence, languor, and decline of mental energy, which can be recovered only by the bracing influence of the northern winter. Many new arrivals complain of depressing insomnia, with alternations of lethargic sleep: I never enjoyed at Zanzibar the light refreshing rest of the desert. Yet the island is a favourable place for the young African traveller to undergo the inevitable ‘seasoning fever’[fever’], which upon the coast or in the interior might prove fatal. The highlands, or the borders of the great central basin, are tolerably healthy, but an invalid would find no comforts there—hardly a waterproof roof. He should not, however, risk after recovery a second attack, but at once push on to his goal; otherwise he will expend in preparation the strength and bottom required to carry out his explorations. With a fresh, sound constitution, he may work hard for three years, and even if driven home by ill health he may return in comparative safety within a reasonable time.
No European, unless thoroughly free from organic disease, should venture to remain longer than three or four years at Zanzibar: the same has been observed of Baghdad, and of the Euphrates valley generally. Lurking maladies will be brought to a crisis, and severe functional derangements are liable to return. The stranger is compelled to take troublesome precautions. He may bathe in cold water, sweet or salt, but he must eschew the refreshment of the morning walk: during the rains, when noxious mists overhang the land, the unpleasant afternoon is the only safe time for exercise. Flannel must always be worn despite the irritability of the ever-perspiring skin: even in the hottest weather the white cotton jackets and overalls of British India are discarded for tweeds, and for an American stuff of mixed cotton and wool. Extra warm clothing is considered necessary as long as the ‘mugginess’ of ‘msika-weather’ lasts. Sudden exposure to the sun is considered dangerous, and the carotid, jugular, and temporal arteries must be carefully protected from cold as well as from heat. Hard work, either of mind or body, is said to produce fever as surely as sitting in draughts or as wearing insufficient clothing. The charming half-hour following sunset is held dangerous, especially in hot weather; yet most tantalizing is the cool delicious interval between the burning day and the breathless night. Natives of the country rarely venture out after dark: a man found in the streets may safely be determined to be either a slave or a thief—probably both.
Directions for diet are minute and vexatious. The stranger is popularly condemned to ‘lodging-house hours’—breakfast at 9 A.M., dinner at 3 P.M., tea at 8 P.M., bed at 10 P.M. He is told also to live temperately but not abstemiously, and never to leave the stomach too long empty. I should prescribe for him, contrary to the usual plan, an abnormal amount of stimulants, port and porter, not claret nor Rhine-wine. It is evident that where appetite is wanting, and where nourishing food is not to be obtained, the ‘patient’ must imbibe as much nutriment as he safely can. In these lands a drunkard outlives a water-drinker, despite Theodoret, ‘vinum bibere non est malum, sed intemperanter bibere perniciosum est’; and here Bacchus, even ‘Bacchus uncivil,’ is still ‘Bacchus the healer.’ As usual old stagers will advise a stranger recovering from fever to strengthen himself with sundry bottles of port, and yet they do not adopt it as a preventive—‘experto crede Ricardo.’ The said port may be Lisbon wine fortified with cheap spirits, liquorice, and logwood—in fact, what is regimentally called ‘strong military ditto;’ yet I have seen wonders worked by the much-debased mixture. Again, Europeans are told to use purgatives, especially after sudden and strong exercise, when the ‘bile is stirred up.’ As an amateur chronothermalist—thanks to my kind old master, the late Dr Dickson—I should suggest tonics and bitters, which often bring relief when the nauseous salts and senna aggravate the evil. Also, in all debilitating countries, when the blood is ‘thin,’ laxatives must be mild, otherwise they cause instead of curing fever; in fact, double tonics and half purgatives should be the rule. Above all things convalescents should be aided by change of air, if only from the house of sickness to that of a neighbour, or to a ship in port. The most long-lived of white races are the citizens of the United States: they are superior to others in mental (or cerebral) energy; they are men of spare, compact fibre, and of regular habits; they also rarely reside more than two or three years at a time on the island. On the other hand, the small French colony has lost in 15 years 26 men: they lived imprudently, they drank sour Bordeaux, and when attacked with fever they killed themselves by the abuse of quinine. Swallowing large doses upon an empty stomach, they irritated the digestive organs, and they brought on cerebral congestion by ‘heroic practice’ when constipated.
According to the Arabs and Hindus of Zanzibar, ague and fever are to be avoided only by perspiring during sleep under a blanket in a closed room—a purgatory for a healthy hot-blooded man in this damp tepid region. I found the cure-almost-as-bad-as-the-disease precaution adopted by the Spanish colonists at my salubrious residence—Fernando Po, West Africa. Only two officers escaped ‘chills,’ and they both courageously carried out the preventive system: on the other hand, it was remarked that they looked more aged, and they appeared to have suffered more from the climate, than those who shook once a month with ‘rigors.’ There is certainly no better prescription for catching ague than a coolth of skin during sleep: having purchased experience at a heavy price, it is my invariable practice when awaking with a chilly epiderm to drink a glass of water ‘cold without,’ and to bury myself for an hour under a pile of blankets. Every slave-hut has a cartel or cot, and the savages of the coast, like those of the Upper Nile, carry about wooden stools for fear of dysentery. I have mentioned how our sailors dig their graves.
So much for the male sex. European women here, as in the Gulf of Guinea, rarely resist the melancholy isolation, the want of society, and the Nostalgia—Heimweh or Home-sickness—so common, yet so little regarded in tropical countries. Under normal circumstances Equatorial Africa is certain death to the Engländerin. I am surprised at the combined folly and brutality of civilized husbands who, anxious to be widowers, poison, cut the throats, or smash the skulls of their better-halves. The thing can be as neatly and quietly, safely and respectably, effected by a few months of African air at Zanzibar or Fernando Po, as by the climate of the Maremma to which the enlightened Italian noble condemned his spouse.
The nosology of Zanzibar is remarkable for the prevalence of urinary and genital diseases; these have been roughly estimated at 75 per cent. Syphilis spreads wide, and where promiscuous intercourse is permitted to the slaves it presents formidable symptoms. The ‘black lion,’ as it is popularly called—in Arabic El Tayr or El Faranj; in Kisawahili, Bubeh, Kiswendi, or T’hego—will destroy the part affected in three weeks: secondaries are to be feared; noses disappear, the hair falls off, and rheumatism and spreading ulcers result. Gonorrhœa is so common that it is hardly considered a disease. Few strangers live long here without suffering from irritation of the bladder, the result, it is said, of hard lime-water: and the common effect of a cold or of stricture is severe vesical catarrh. Sarcocele and hydrocele, especially of the left testis, according to the Arabs, attack all classes, and are attributed to the relaxing climate, to unrestrained sexual indulgence, and sometimes to external injury. These diseases do not always induce impotence or impede procreation. The tunica vaginalis is believed to fill three times: as in elephantiasis the member is but a mass of flesh, a small meatus only remaining. The deposition of serum is enormous; I have heard of six quarts being drawn off. The natives punctuate with a heated copper needle, and sometimes thus induce tetanus: Europeans add injections of red wine and iodine. The latter is also applied with benefit in the early stage to sarcocele; and both complaints have yielded, it is said, to the galvanic current. Strangers are advised at all times to wear suspensory bandages.