The Changing medical profession: an international perspective

But Parke, as medical officer, was fighting a losing battle.Attention to hygiene and the distribution of quinine tablets did nothing to prevent most members of the expeditionincluding Parke and Stanley-falling ill on several occasions.Stanley was close to death at one stage, while Parke's companion, Major Jameson, died of blackwater fever.Deaths were even more frequent among the African bearers, many of whom were recruited in Zanzibar, Sudan or Somalia, and unused to the climate and diseases of the equatorial jungle.However, Parke's efforts to treat the diseases which afflicted the expedition are well documented, and we gain from Dr Lyon's biography a valuable insight into the therapeutic practices of the period.The reader may be gratified to learn that the unappealing Stanley was treated for fever with castor oil and mildewed mustard leaf: a just desert if ever there was one.