270 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

their efforts to poison the king's mind against us.

As the report spread of the improvement of the king's health through the white men's medicine, increasing numbers of chiefs, and also of the poorer classes, presented themselves for treatment. The negro as a rule has great faith in European medicines, and believes that every white man is born a doctor.

They are specially partial to strong purges and emetics, and, as a man once told me, they like a medicine " that scratches their throats " ; they also consider it most wonderful that we should be able to predict the effects of an emetic.

The Waganda have a curious idea that most diseases are produced by the presence of a snake in their interiors, and when a patient is asked what is the matter with him, his almost invariable reply is that he has a snake inside him. But it must not be supposed that negroes require large doses of medicine as a rule, for frequently they are very sensitive to the action of drugs, especially of quinine. Many cases, however, which are brought to the traveller for treatment are chronic or long-standing diseases, where the patient has tried in vain all the native remedies, and come as a last resource to the European, often, most unreasonably, expecting to be cured with a single dose. For all non-professional travellers, who are "only slightly acquainted with medical science, Dr. Livingstone's rule should cer-