"WHITE CARGO" DRAMAS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 123, 26 May 1928, Page 20

"WHITE CARGO" DRAMAS

MYSTERY MALADY OF EXILES IN TROPICS. ■ ' Ah, God! One sniff of England To greet our llcsh and Mood; To hear (he traffic slitrrlttc Onco more through London raucl. Kipling's lines must have 1)0011 prosent in tho minds of the Royal Society of- Medicine members, whose discussion on tropical, "nervos" is reported in tho '"British Medical Journal" of 17th March, says the London "Daily Chron- ;. icle. *' : Dr. H. B. Day said in the case of men taking appointments abroad, the risk of breakdown was reduced by careful selection and apprenticeship, but these precautions were generally lacking in the case of the women who went with them, and for whom outside distractions were few, lv' a paper read in his absence, Lieu-tenant-Colonel O. A. E. Berkeley Hill. ■of the Indian Medical Service, remarked that "recognition by the laity that Europeans, were liable to mental disorder, in the.tropics was shown by such terms, as. 'Punjab Head' and 'West .Coast Head.' Tho Germans had a word called ''Tropenkolicr.' "Novels dealing with life in (lie tropics," pointed out tho doctor, "abounded in references to mental disorder among Europeans." He quoted .Kipling, Conrad, Scton Merriman. ;There was some justification for the assumption that the mental disorder of Europeans in the tropics was an anxious neurosis. • On, the other-hand, Dr. Hugh Stanuus said the condition was a kind of neurasthenia, the symptoms of which "were abnormal'liability to fatigue and irritability. A depressing picture of the nerve-shattered exilo,i reminiscent of "White Cargo," was drawn by the i doctor:—"There was the man exiled

from, home, separated from his family, perhaps in financial straits, lonely or lacking congenial society, disappointed in promotion, unable to escape from \ monotony, living amidst a native population who caused him annoyanco beiVsaJuse.he had never troubled to understand their language or their psychoI logy, beset all day by sodden heat, and driven to bed only to keep awake by the reiterated cry of the brain-fever bird or a chorus of frogs." Hero, in this emotional and physical unrest, lay the' cause of tropical neurasthenia.