Garlic in meals may work

Nov 08, 2017 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
I read about malaria and the scarcity of medicines that could help patients suffering from the disease. I remembered my own lengthy illness from this disease, when as a child of 12 years, I spent a holiday on the Essequibo coast and returned to Georgetown with symptoms which city doctors did not recognise.
We lived near to an experienced school nurse and she happened to mention it to the doctor she worked for – the younger Dr. Nicholson. He told her that from the shaking and shivering symptoms, it might be malaria, established that I had just returned from a ‘mosquito-ridden’ area, and suggested a consultation with Dr. Bettencourt-Gomes, the specialist in the treatment of malaria, be arranged.
This doctor was on the staff of a private hospital, but once a week attended patients in P.H.G. fee-paying wards, but with a request from a personal friend, the specialist might see me. My mother got a letter from Mr. Follett-Smith, a Bookers’ director at the time.
The specialist diagnosed malaria and immediately handed my mother a prescription to be taken to the hospital’s on-site dispensary, and we went away with the suitable medicine – quinine, as I recall. Gradually I recovered.
Malaria is a very debilitating disease, carried by mosquitoes. That ex-pat superstructure sometimes served a unique and positive purpose.
Since the age of 12, I have wondered why my Indian relatives were left alone at night, while the mosquitoes ate me alive.
A few years ago at my ripe old age, I got the answer through a TV cook’s throwaway remark. The cooking was being done on a beach and the cook grabbed a handful of garlic growing on a spot nearby, explaining it was convenient to have fresh herbs at hand, and garlic kept the mosquitoes away!
As Indians, my relatives were daily consumers of garlic. Shades of the legend of Dracula. So, in the absence of medicine for malaria, garlic in meals may work.
Geralda D.

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