20
Illnesses
Mesny seems to have got through life with remarkably few illnesses and, apart from one major well-nigh fatal illness during the forced march from Soochow with the Taipings and the occasional bouts of malaria, had he suffered anything more serious than a high temperature, he did not mention it. During his undiagnosed well-nigh fatal illness he had to fend for himself and lived off boiled rice-water. He could not face food, ran a very high temperature and at one point he was laid out, unconscious, presumably to die. He was placed on a bed of reeds on a veranda with a cannon barrel as a pillow and covered with an old vermin-ridden sheepskin jacket, flung over him by one of the assistant cooks. He had lain there delirious for about a week before he recovered, with little recollection of anything apart from a Cantonese doctor making him swallow a large pill as a cure for fever. He later described the illness as the one 'when his hair fell out.'
He suffered from prickly heat all the time he was in hot countries, and from eczema and boils during the time he was based in Canton [1884-1887]. He was also bitten by a snake, slept amongst swarms of vicious mosquitoes and doubtless drank filthy water on occasions, though this is never recorded by him in so many words.
He obtained for himself various patent medicines, especially during his time in Kueichou province, such as Collis Browne's chlorodyne, Lepeltier's sulphate of quinine, Holloway's Pills and ointment, and described how his reputation as a doctor grew during the campaign when he successfully dosed many a sick Chinese soldier from his medicine cabinet, saving the lives of a great number of them.
He claims at a later date to be a most abstemious man if not an absolute teetotaller, and practically a vegetarian; eggs, butter and milk being the only animal food he allowed himself. Mesny repeated on several occasions that he rigidly abstained from animal food, especially whilst living in the interior of China, out of respect for the authority of the officials and as an example of obedience to well-intentioned laws. At one point, Mesny lived for three years in a Buddhist monastery in Kuei-yang Fu in Kueichou province, Western China, [though not as a religious] and at another stage in his life was vegetarian for three months at a stretch.