EARLY BELGIAN COLONIAL EFFORTS - The University of Texas at ...

vessels is highly commendable. The records of the ships’ doctors speak of a highly
organized and disciplined crew. But they were still only one crew at a time for too many
dreams and colonial desires.
Related to the use of the navy and the reports of the ships’ physicians was the
sheer inability of almost any Europeans to survive, or at least function for any extended
period of time in tropical Africa. The use of quinine to ward off malaria was only
beginning to be understood and would not be fully serviceable for another fifteen years.
The observations relative to seasonal disease, humid conditions, and the polluted water
were useful insights that still did not, however, understand the malarial cycle of the
mosquito. Despite an excellent medical team with insightful although not useful
394 The Duc de Brabant, the other ship in the Belgian navy, had been decommissioned
temporarily in 1848 due to a fiscal crisis.
186