On the Edge of the Primeval Forest: Experiences and Observations of a Doctor in Equatorial Africa

Schweitzer's account of his first period as a mission doctor at Lambaréné in what was then French Equatorial Africa, from his arrival in 1913 until he and his wife were interned as German nationals during the First World War. Published by Paul Haupt in Bern in 1921, and in C. T. Campion's English translation in London in 1922, it is built partly from the reports he sent home, with chapters dated by period. It describes the journey out, building the hospital, the diseases he treated, the timber trade, the work of the mission and his reflections on the moral obligation of Europeans towards Africa. The book was widely reprinted and made his work known to a large public. Its views of Africans are those of a colonial European of the time, which later readers have criticised.