Segment 1 Intercut shots of scenes relating to malaria in Thailand are seen. The narrator tells how in 1979 David Warrell and his wife Mary from the University of Oxford set up the Wellcome Trust Research Unit at Mahidol University in Bangkok. Information is given by the narrator as to how malaria affects the body and we see university staff tending to a hospital patient. There is a shot of the bridge over the River Kwai. An electron micrograph of the brain of someone suffering from cerebral malaria is shown. Treatments of Quinine and Dexamethasone are compared to Quinine alone. The film then goes on to look at rabies. We are shown stray dogs being caught by dog catchers. A woman with rabies is shown - she is terrified of drinking water (a condition known as hydrophobia), a sure sign of rabies. We see people getting rabies vaccines at the Institute Merieux. Sheeps' brains contain the inactivated virus and are used to harvest the vaccine. The Wellcome Unit has shown that the expensive but potent tissue vaccines in the West can be used economically and effectively if injected into eight sites on the body. We see a man having several rabies injections administered. Time start: 00:00:00:00 Time end: 00:04:26:06 Length: 00:04:26:06
Segment 2 An aerial shot of southern Thailand rubber plantations is shown. We see the rubber tappers working barefoot in the forest and a shot of latex pouring from a tree into a cup. Dangerous snakes lurk in the grass around the workers; one is shown. A man who has been bitten by a Malayan pit viper is studied - we see the fang marks and a close shot of the wound with a large blister. The snake is shown having its venom milked into a glass. The victim of the bite has blood blisters, bleeding gums, bruised eyelids and blood that will not clot when examined in a test tube. However he has been given anti-venom. We see shots of cobras and Malayan pit vipers, Russell's pit vipers and green pit vipers. If a snake species is unknown, venom can be taken from the blister that follows the bite and the snake identified using a test (shown) developed by scientists at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Time start: 00:04:26:06 Time end: 00:07:39:24 Length: 00:03:13:18