It still was not absolutely certain whether I had ‘dip’ or not, but my head was only a foot away from neighbours on either side, both of whom were old cases and one of whom was completely paralysed. They said that about eighty per cent of people were anyhow immune to diphtheria, and if I didn’t have it or catch it in the first days, I could at least have the satisfaction of knowing I was immune!

But in spite of Ginger’s medical domination of the disease, the ‘dip’ ward couldn’t be other than a very foul place. The stink from the hideous, green, suppurating ulcers was vile; a person unaccustomed to the stench would probably have vomited on the spot. And the bamboo slats were verminous, not only with bed bugs that stank of bad burnt almonds when you squashed them, but with the common or garden body lice. Till the lice were sated at about two or three a.m. you just lay and scratched and cursed and sweated; or perhaps after three or four hours misery you just went to sleep from exhaustion. The following morning, on average, you picked about twenty to thirty lice from your sleeping gear, squashing the little brutes between your finger and thumb nails, for their leathery, elastic bodies could only be ‘popped’ and could not be just plain squashed. You were not allowed to leave your shelf to relieve yourself, and the total sanitary accommodation for a ward of seventy or eighty patients was one bed pan, one wooden box, one tin bottle and one hollow bamboo. The stink and misery of such humiliating conditions can only be dimly imagined. Bad cases might stay in the wards for months and normal cases about four weeks.

As has been said, for fear of infection, no visitors were allowed; but in the evenings you could sometimes prop yourselves up and look over the atap wall and talk with friends standing under the trees a few yards outside. Henry used to come along for a short while most evenings, but he was more ill than I, though he didn’t have the unpleasantness of living among ‘dip’ cases. After ten days, still not clear whether I was immune or recovered, I was allowed out of the hospital. Passing down the row of slats I saw an old man of sixty-one, just over his ‘dip’ and cheerful – a few months later he died of cholera. I saw, too, another man who was Ginger’s prize case. This was a young man who really had fought to live, and after being given up twice, had come through. He was still paralysed, but was beginning to move his arms a little and was propped up in a semi-sitting position. After another three or four months, after careful nursing and clever treatment, practically every ‘dip’ case who had before been hopelessly paralysed, became able to walk again quite normally.