176 TO THE LAND OF THE NEGROID in charge of a competent doctor, with a motley collection of patients from far districts and near.

Shilluks, Arabs, and Nuers were amongst those who profited by the facilities given, and each and all wondered why they did not get well on the first dose of medicine. This constitutes one of the great difficulties in treating the native. Treatment seems to be held as a species of magic, the effects of which should be immediately visible, so regular attendance of out-patients is hard to obtain.

Surgery is attended by similar difficulties ; patients cannot believe that it is well to lose half a leg in order to save the rest of the body. In South African hospitals a species of fatalism is common.

If a man once give up hope, which a white man would cling to, he says he is going to die, and forthwith puts his intention into practice, and dies. It is similar here, and no steps will prevent them when once they have made up their minds !

Their own medical practice is a mixture of elemental knowledge, quackery, and superstition, many sensible methods being led to more by accidental results than by reason or principle.

One feels struck by the position in which a servant sometimes places his employer in this country in regard to his personal relationship. He appears, especially if his employer be long resident in the country, to expect him to take a generally paternal interest in him and his condition of life, even after he has left his service. It may be an unrecognized