“To lie on my back was torture, to lie on my stomach a torment. I tried to lie on my side, but even here my bones ached as though they were being cracked in the grip of giant pliers. I could not eat. I could not drink-not even water. They fed me through the veins, intravenously, for how long I do not know-ten days, two weeks. All the time I lay baking-not burning or flaming, understand , but baking as though I were in an oven-feeling the will to live shrivel within me, yearning only for a tiny trickle of sweat to burst from my desiccated flesh, hearing people alive and talking around me, the touch of the nurse, the momentary cool of the alcohol being rubbed on my back like a blissful reminder of the world I had left, but comprehending nothing. Lying there, only a rag of aching bones slowly shrinking in the glowing oven of malaria.”
Robert Leckie “Helmet for my Pillow” Bantam Books