I now felt fully qualified to treat yaws.Likewise I had a wholesome respect for them.Not so the rest of the crew of the Snark.In their case, seeing was not believing.One and all, they had seen my dreadful predicament; and all of them, I am convinced, had a subconscious certitude that their own superb constitutions and glorious personalities would never allow lodgment of so vile a poison in their carcasses as my anaemic constitution and mediocre personality had allowed to lodge in mine.At Port Resolution, in the New Hebrides, Martin elected to walk barefooted in the bush and returned on board with many cuts and abrasions, especially on his shins.
"You'd better be careful," I warned him."I'll mix up some corrosive sublimate for you to wash those cuts with.An ounce of prevention, you know."But Martin smiled a superior smile.Though he did not say so.Inevertheless was given to understand that he was not as other men (Iwas the only man he could possibly have had reference to), and that in a couple of days his cuts would be healed.He also read me a dissertation upon the peculiar purity of his blood and his remarkable healing powers.I felt quite humble when he was done with me.Evidently I was different from other men in so far as purity of blood was concerned.
Nakata, the cabin-boy, while ironing one day, mistook the calf of his leg for the ironing-block and accumulated a burn three inches in length and half an inch wide.He, too, smiled the superior smile when I offered him corrosive sublimate and reminded him of my own cruel experience.I was given to understand, with all due suavity and courtesy, that no matter what was the matter with my blood, his number-one, Japanese, Port-Arthur blood was all right and scornful of the festive microbe.
Wada, the cook, took part in a disastrous landing of the launch, when he had to leap overboard and fend the launch off the beach in a smashing surf.By means of shells and coral he cut his legs and feet up beautifully.I offered him the corrosive sublimate bottle.
Once again I suffered the superior smile and was given to understand that his blood was the same blood that had licked Russia and was going to lick the United States some day, and that if his blood wasn't able to cure a few trifling cuts, he'd commit hari-kari in sheer disgrace.
From all of which I concluded that an amateur M.D.is without honour on his own vessel, even if he has cured himself.The rest of the crew had begun to look upon me as a sort of mild mono-maniac on the question of sores and sublimate.Just because my blood was impure was no reason that I should think everybody else's was.I made no more overtures.Time and microbes were with me, and all I had to do was wait.
"I think there's some dirt in these cuts," Martin said tentatively, after several days."I'll wash them out and then they'll be all right," he added, after I had refused to rise to the bait.
Two more days passed, but the cuts did not pass, and I caught Martin soaking his feet and legs in a pail of hot water.
"Nothing like hot water," he proclaimed enthusiastically."It beats all the dope the doctors ever put up.These sores will be all right in the morning."But in the morning he wore a troubled look, and I knew that the hour of my triumph approached.
"I think I WILL try some of that medicine," he announced later on in the day."Not that I think it'll do much good," he qualified, "but I'll just give it a try anyway."Next came the proud blood of Japan to beg medicine for its illustrious sores, while I heaped coals of fire on all their houses by explaining in minute and sympathetic detail the treatment that should be given.Nakata followed instructions implicitly, and day by day his sores grew smaller.Wada was apathetic, and cured less readily.But Martin still doubted, and because he did not cure immediately, he developed the theory that while doctor's dope was all right, it did not follow that the same kind of dope was efficacious with everybody.As for himself, corrosive sublimate had no effect.Besides, how did I know that it was the right stuff? Ihad had no experience.Just because I happened to get well while using it was not proof that it had played any part in the cure.
There were such things as coincidences.Without doubt there was a dope that would cure the sores, and when he ran across a real doctor he would find what that dope was and get some of it.
About this time we arrived in the Solomon Islands.No physician would ever recommend the group for invalids or sanitoriums.I spent but little time there ere I really and for the first time in my life comprehended how frail and unstable is human tissue.Our first anchorage was Port Mary, on the island of Santa Anna.The one lone white man, a trader, came alongside.Tom Butler was his name, and he was a beautiful example of what the Solomons can do to a strong man.He lay in his whale-boat with the helplessness of a dying man.
No smile and little intelligence illumined his face.He was a sombre death's-head, too far gone to grin.He, too, had yaws, big ones.We were compelled to drag him over the rail of the Snark.He said that his health was good, that he had not had the fever for some time, and that with the exception of his arm he was all right and trim.His arm appeared to be paralysed.Paralysis he rejected with scorn.He had had it before, and recovered.It was a common native disease on Santa Anna, he said, as he was helped down the companion ladder, his dead arm dropping, bump-bump, from step to step.He was certainly the ghastliest guest we ever entertained, and we've had not a few lepers and elephantiasis victims on board.
Martin inquired about yaws, for here was a man who ought to know.
He certainly did know, if we could judge by his scarred arms and legs and by the live ulcers that corroded in the midst of the scars.
