This short volume consists of the ten lectures which Sir Patrick Manson, medical adviser to the Colonial Office, delivered in San Francisco in 1905. Valuable to this day are his clinical descriptions: the three foot Guinea worm, still treated by slowly winding it on a stick when its tail emerges from the patient's leg, filarial elephantiasis, malaria, sleeping sickness, the wasting sickness kala-azar, plus sound advice on how to diagnose puzzling tropical fevers. The book is also an inadvertent chronicle of British imperialism. - Summary by Pamela Nagami, M.D.
