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“
If I were in South Africa & melonically equipped, I would engage that no soldier should perish with
dysentery—nor remain off duty above one day. But do you suppose the medical staff would allow
Lord Kitchener there, or Lord Curzan in India to listen to me?
“
Indeed no.They wouldn’t dream of permitting it. . . .”
InTwain’s story,“Two Little Tales,” published in 1901 in
The Century Magazine
, a dying emperor
is saved by a “watermelon cure.”The story may have been inspired by an incident recounted by Albert
Bigelow Paine, in which Twain had successfully assisted a friend to introduce to the resistant medical
director general of the British Army a skimmed-milk product.
Francis Henry Bennett Skrine (1847-1933) was a British government official who befriended Twain
in India in 1896 and whose written works include
The Life of Sir William Wilson Hunter
(1901).