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Among the Human Leopards

HIS FIRST OPERATION was in a chicken-coop, but he saved the savage.
It was a gruesome sort of place, Lambarene, in west equatorial Africa.

The dense, tropical forest prest close to the edge of the river Ogowe. Night fell early and fast, and sometimes human leopards roamed abroad, lusting for blood. Every known tropical plague found victims among the primitive natives, some potbellied from disease, others skinny as stickpins.

But this man whose name ranks high in theology, philosophy, music, and medicine is content to minister to the savage and superstitious folk of the jungle, whose gratitude is slow in coming. All because he "had learned of the physical misery of the natives of this region through Alsatian missionaries in charge of a station at the Paris Mission Society there" and "found out that there was no doctor in that country" and no money with which to provide one. "So," he says simply, "I decided to found a hospital there."

[Black and white photograph of a woman and man]
Illustrations from "The Forest Hospital at Lambarene" (Henry Holt and Company)
They Chose the Jungle
Dr. Albert and Mrs. Helene Schweitzer, who established a missionary hospital in tropical Africa. He is one of the world's greatest living organists and an authority on Bach.

That is all the reason Dr. Albert Schweitzer gives in his book, "The Forest Hospital at Lambarene" (Holt and Company), translated by his friend, C.T. Campion.

And be it remembered, as told in these pages March 21, that Dr. Schweitzer is one of the world's greatest living organists, the greatest living authority on the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, and famous as lecturer and author.

But he said good-by to all that when he went down to Africa on a cargo boat simply because he had heard that the natives around Lambarene had no doctor. He went first with his wife, Mrs. Helene Schweitzer, who helped him in that first operation in the chicken-coop. Illness forced their return to Europe, but he spent the time in writing and lecturing until at last his health was restored.

So it was back to Lambarene in 1924, this time without his helpmeet, who had not sufficiently recovered to be able to withstand the insidious perils of the jungle. But he now has two assistant doctors and a couple of trained nurses.

This philosopher, musician, and missionary doctor is no ordinary figure of a man. He is about six feet tall, powerfully built, with muscles of iron, dark brown hair and eyes, says Dr. Karl Reiland in his introduction to the book:

"His personality is irresistibly attractive; sincerity, sympathy, humor, and penetration are some of 'the elements so mixed in him' with his love of laughter and charming simplicity, that he is 'at home' with any one anywhere. It is a most remarkable combination of brain, brawn, and spiritual brotherhood with which he is endowed, and not only the difficult achievements in which he has won distinction but the inspiring qualities he exhibits with such humility conspire to make him one of the most distinguished and lovable individuals of our time."

In fact, says Dr. Reiland, Dr. Schweitzer "does not know how really great he is."

The man was actually happy when he got back to his little hospital, tho rust and decay greeted his eye, and he had to tread a new path in the undergrowth.

But, before that, when he had made a preliminary stop at another station, the first talk turned to the human leopards, whose story is as strange and gruesome as any that comes out of that dark land of mystery. We read that:

"They are men possest by the delusion that they are leopards, and therefore must kill men, and when they are out to do this, they try to behave altogether like leopards.

"They go on all fours, fastening on their hands and feet real leopard's claws or iron imitations of them, so as to leave behind them a spoor like that of a leopard; and when they catch a victim, they sever his carotid artery, as leopards do."

Like other secret associations, says Dr. Schweitzer, these bands of human leopards "are signs of an uncanny process of fermentation which is going on in the heart of Africa. Reviving superstition, primitive fanaticism, and very modest Bolshevism are today combining in the strangest way in the Dark Continent."

But more of the doctor and his hospital: Nearly everything is to be done over again when he returns. He must build, often with his own hands, doctor, operate, and nurse, see that graves are dug, and keep an eye on his people lest superstition get the upper hand. Tabus rule the jungle. The natives won't help with a burial or dig a grave because of tabus. Untrained in benevolence, they frequently make no return. They come for food as well as medical attention. An extra ration induces them to help around the hospital.

They suffer from all the terrible diseases of the tropics-blackwater fever, sleeping sickness, enteric, elephantiasis, leprosy, and a host of others. Sometimes they have been poisoned with native medicine or by enemies. Sometimes they bite when they fight, and the human bite is said to be the worst of all.

The book grew out of letters not intended for publication. Of the first months in Lambarene Dr. Schweitzer writes:

"Easter Monday sees our first patients arrive, among them several old people with heart complaints and in very poor condition, for whom scarcely anything can be done. We therefore get many deaths in the first weeks. With one of these bad cases I sat up a whole night hoping to save him by means of injections of caffein, ether, and camphor, with the result that a small native girl in the mission station believes me to be a human leopard. She runs away in terror every time she sees me, and tho the schoolmistress tries to talk her out of her fear, it is no use.

"'I saw them,' she says, 'take the man into the hospital in the evening, and he was alive. Then came the doctor and was alone with him the whole night. In the morning they brought him out dead. Evidently the doctor killed him. He is a white human leopard who is allowed to go about freely, while they shut the black ones in prison.'"

Sometimes the struggle is almost heartbreaking. Many of the the savages are slow of understanding, ungrateful, and alien to any moral discipline. The poorest and most numerous of the hospital's guests are the Bendjabis, who are a sore trial to their volunteer and saintly helpers. For instance,

"If a Bendjabi appears of his own accord each morning for his bandaging or his injection or to get his medicine, and does not run away because his turn does not come at once; if when