206 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE M0N1HLY 



Dispensary group at public school building, Fairmon, Robison County, N. C, 

 July, 1911. Treated at the place on that day, 187. 



the individual from doing his ordinary 

 work, reducing, it is said, his efficiency 

 to less than half. A good part of the 

 inefficiency, laziness and lack of enter- 

 prise of the white people of the south 

 is attributable to the infection. It is 

 further a disease which is both curable 

 and preventable, and it is in such a 

 case that medicine and hygiene have 

 their great opportunity. 



Some 75,000 persons were treated at 

 the initiative of the commission, and 

 much was accomplished by spreading 

 knowledge as to the means of prevent- 

 ing soil pollution. Indirectly the com- 

 mission has had the effect of awakening 

 interest in health conditions throughout 

 the south, so that state boards of health 

 have become more active, and superin- 

 tendents of health giving their whole 

 time to the work have been appointed 

 in various counties. The commission 

 has also undertaken to obtain informa- 

 tion in regard to the hookworm disease 

 in foreign countries. In Europe, except 

 in Italy, the infection is practically 

 confined to miners, and is found in only 

 a few well-defined localities, but in 

 many tropical and sub-tropical coun- 

 tries the infection is extremely prev- 



alent. It is said that 90 per cent, of 

 the working population of Porto Rico 

 are infected; on many plantations in 

 Ceylon the infection rises as high as 90 

 per cent.; of the three hundred million 

 of people in India 60 to 80 out of every 

 hundred harbor the parasite, and condi- 

 tions are nearly as bad in the southern 

 two thirds of the Chinese Empire. 



SYNTHETIC BUBBEB 

 Professor W. H. Perkin, of the 

 University of Manchester, who is the 

 son of Sir William Perkin, the discov- 

 erer of aniline dyes, presented a paper 

 before the Society of Chemical Indus- 

 try last month describing the methods 

 by which synthetic rubber had been 

 produced, and stating that the process 

 is such that rubber can 1 e made as 

 economically as it can be obtained 

 under natural conditions, probably, at 

 a cost of about twenty-five cents a 

 pound. The scientific research was 

 undertaken under the auspices of Mr. 

 Alfred Strange, the work being done 

 largely by Dr. F. E. Matthews, of Lon- 

 don, and Professor Fernbach, of the 

 Pasteur Institute. It has been known 

 for some time that caoutchouc, the 



