THE BRITIS t 5u4 MIEDICAL JOURNAL J DAVID LIVINGSTONE. [MARCI 15, 1913. a qualification Livingstone showed that same determina- DAVID LIVINGSTONE. tion to achieve his purpose of which his life in Africa BORN MARCH 19TH, 1813. gave so many evidences. It is told of him that as a boy he not only climbed to a higher point in the ruins of ON March 19th, 1813, David Livingstone was born in a Bothwell Castle than any other, but also carved his name house in Shuttle Row, in the village of Blantyre, on the up there. he had some stiff climbing to do in Africa, alnd banks of the Clyde, in north-west Lanarkshire, Scotland; he left his name cut out there too. he died on May 1st, 1873, in a hastily built hut, in During all the many years he spent in the heart of the Chitambo's village, in the country of Ilala, to the south Dark Cointinent, making the discovery of the lakes Ngam-ii, of Lake Bangweolo, Central Africa; and in these sixty Shirwa, Nyassa, and Bangweolo, and of much else, lhe years he had literally, and without any exaggeration, never forgot that he was a doctor as well as a missionary. opened up the Dark Continent to the light of miedicine, His writings are full of his medical experiences, and onie of civilization, and of Christianity. He was great as an must admire the extraordinary accuracy and insight of explorer and geographer, for he travelled twenty-nine many of his observations. Even in the twentieth centuLry thousand miles and explored a million square miles of his name is constantly cropping up in bocks on Africa. In territory; he had great visions of the future and indomit- an article, for instance, on " Some Tribal Customs in able courage. for he foresaw the linking up of the Cape relation to Medicine and Morals of the Nyam-nyam and with Cairo, the carrying of education and of Christianity Gour People,"2 published in 1911, Livingstone is quoted to the teeming millions of Africa's children, and he naever eight or nine times. "I have an immense practice," he faltered in his belief that the slave trade would ultimately wrote once; " patients walk 130 miles for my advice; this be crushed out; but he was also a medical man, and it is the country for a medical man, but he must leave fees would ill become the profession of which lie was a member out of the question." to allow the centenary of his birth to pass without notice. It is very interesting, too, to take notice of how often Medical men may well delight to honour the memory of medical phraseology tinges Livingstone's ordinarv con- the man who has been called the " Columbus of Africa," versation and gives point to his utterances. Take that although the comparison with the discoverer of America most memorable message of his to the New York Herald, is not altogether a happy one. Of Livingstone it has been in which he spoke of the slave trade these piercing words: said that it would not be out of place to designate the "All I can say in my loneliness is, May Heaven's ricl whole interior of the African continent a memorial to his blessing come down on every one-American, Englishman, genius for exploration and to his heroic sacrifices and Turk-who will help to heal this open sore of the world." achievements.' Take, again, tllis reflection, written in his Journal under This is not the place for an appreciation of Livingstone's the date June 24th, 1872: "TThe medical education lhas work as a mnissionary or as an explorer; but some led me to a continual tendency to suspend the judgement. attention may quite suitably be given to the medical What a state of blessedness it wouild have been had aspects of his early life in this country, of his later life in I possessed the dead certainty of the homoeopathists, Africa, and to the medical developments which have taken and as soon as I fotnd Lakes Bangweolo, Moero, and origin in the enthusiasm which sprang up when the full Kamalondo pouring their waters down the great central significance of his life's work and of his lonely death began valley, bellowed out, 'Hurralh I Eureka!' and got home to be recognized. in firm and honest belief that I had settled it [the source Young David Livingstone became a doctor that he of the Nile] and no mistake. Instead of that I am even might be a missionary. One of his boyhood's heroes was now not cocksure tllat I have not been following down Dr. Gutzlaff, the medical missionary to China, and he at what may after all be the Congo." first looked to China also. At the age of 10 he had gone But medicine did more than tinge Livingstone's lan- into a cotton mill in his native Blantyre as a "piecer," guage and thought. Dr. A. G. Miller hlias found evidence his duty being to tie together the broken ends of any in the great explorer's Missionary Travels in Sout7h threads which might chance to break in the spinning; Africa, published, let it be remembered, in 1857, that he and here he made a beginning for getting a qualification was a pioneer and discoverer in medical science as well in medicine by studying Latin in his spare minutes. The as in other things. The time referred to was 1852, and story is that he propped up Ruddiman's Latin Rudiments Livingstone wrote: on the top of the spinning frame, and got by heart his declensions and the like whilst walking to and fro in On the 30th of May I was seized with fever for the first time. front of it. This was during the day from a.m. The temperature in the axilla, over the heart, and regioin 6 to of the stomach was in my case 100 deg., but 103 deg. at the nape 8 p.m., and at night he worked at his books at home. One of the neck and throughout the course of the spine. There were of the books which he delighted in at this time was pains along the latter, and frontal headache.... Anxious to Culpepper's Herbat, in which it may well be imagined he ascertain whether the natives possesse(d any remedy of which found information as strange as any he was afterwards to we were ignorant, I requested the assistance of one of Sekeletu's doctors.... After being stewed in their vapour baths, and obtain in the wilds of Africa. This was hiis first medical smokedl like a red herring over green twigs, I concluded that reading. He saved enough money by his work to enable I could cure the fever more quickly than they can. The native him to take out medical and divinity classes in Glasgow, treatment is, however, of service if employed in conjunction for he had become a spinner in the mill, and so able to with a wet sheet, and a mild aperient in combination with better wages. was no quinine.... There is a good deal in not " giving in " to this draw There Carnegie Trust in disease. Scotland in these days to give financial aid to young lads with brains enough to pass the examinations for the Dr. Miller remarks: learned professions; but the London Missionary Society This experience of Dr. Livingstone's was in 1852, when came to Livingstone's assistance, and, after some time clinical thermometers and the wet pack were practically un- spent at Chipping Ongar in 1838, and later in the London known in the treatment of fevers. The administration of hospitals, he was admitted (in 1840) a Licentiate of quinine along with a laxative is a method which I have found most useful in my own practice. The laxative seems to in- the Faculty of Plhysicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. crease the activity of the quinine and prevents unpleasant Meantime he had met Dr. Moffat, with whom he symptoms, even when the quinine is i-dministered in large was to be more closely related erelong, and had doses. Dr. Livingstone's concluding remark is quite up to lhad his thoughts turned somewhat from China, to date. His testing the native doctor's powers on himself was which he had felt strongly attracted, and directed to very characteristic of the man. Africa instead. Moffat said to him one day that if he Space, however, fails to refer to more than these medical would push on beyond his old station. in South Africa he incidents and reflections in Livingstone's books and would come to a vast unoccupied district, where on a clear journals; but it may be said in passing that medical men morning he (Dr. Moffat) had seen the smoke of a thousand who have not read the various works he published and villages, and no missionary had ever been. So at the close the letters and records he wrote have, even from the of 1840 Dr. Livingstone set sail for Algoa Bay, and it is purely professional point of view, a treat in store. No characteristic of him that he learnt how to use the sadder story may be found than that of the weary, disease- quadrant from the captain on the voyage. stricken explorer's death in the swamps to the south of It is noteworthy that in his gaining of a medical 2 Anderson, R. G.: Fourth Report of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories a.t the Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum, vol.