ESSAYS 667 



on receipt of a personal letter from me. That is all that I ever received for 

 showing the West African Colonies how their malaria is carried and how it 

 should be reduced — needless to say, I never went there again. But, although 

 he helped me on that occasion, Mr. Chamberlain (then head of the Colonial 

 Office) was never allowed to see the practical bearing of my suggestions ; 

 and when, at a deputation to him, I begged him to appoint Sanitary Com- 

 missioners for West Africa on the usual public-health model, to see that 

 real sanitary work was being done there, he gave the typical politician's 

 reply that he did not care to appoint spies (sic) over the work of his local 

 officers ! So much for the Colonies. As for India, it had done almost 

 nothing since I left it in 1899 except to conduct a bogus experiment at Mian 

 Mir (Lahore) to prove that mosquitoes could not be reduced, or that, if 

 they could, their reduction would not affect the malaria (though it was 

 admitted that the latter was due to the former !). The fact was that mos- 

 quito reduction was unpopular because it forced local sanitary staffs to 

 work, and local governments to expend some small funds. Money spent on 

 reducing the death-rate has little to show for it in comparison with money 

 spent on new post-offices, hospitals, or colleges — to which the names of 

 great local administrators may be attached as a perpetual memorial. It 

 was always easier, not to spend money on mosquito-reduction, but to issue 

 instructions to the people adjuring them to take quinine, protect their 

 windows, or wear veils : this would show that Government was doing some- 

 thing and would save them money at the same time. Of course the people 

 would pay no attention whatever to the advice — but that didn't matter. 

 . . . Well, at last I determined to make a final appeal to the head of the 

 India Office in London himself. I spent an hour alone with him pleading 

 my cause on behalf of the million people who are said to die of malaria 

 every year in India alone, and of the millions more, mostly children, who 

 suffer from it. He sat before me like an ox, with divergent eyes, answering 

 and asking nothing. Of course he did nothing. He was the personification 

 of the British nation in the presence of a new idea ; and as I left I could 

 almost fancy seeing the prophetic handwriting on the wall over his head, 

 Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. A little later the Americans abolished malaria 

 from the whole Panama Canal Zone, chiefly by my methods, and thus won 

 the real honour of having been the first to develop a great new sanitary 

 measure. The British have many good qualities, but also grave defects, 

 which, if not corrected, will certainly lose them that hegemony of the world 

 which their forefathers earned for them. 



Sir William MacGregor was not a politician but a genuine administrator, 

 careful of the real interests of the peoples entrusted to him. The only 

 medical man who has been a British governor of recent years (and we ought 

 to have many such governors), he was aware of the superlative value of 

 sanitation in the development of a colony. Wise, grave, but humorous, 

 bearded, thick-set, with wrinkled forehead and a high and somewhat conical 

 bald head, his kindly manner and low voice filled all with trust in him. He 

 drank no wine and did not smoke ; but was no fanatic in these respects, 

 and kept an hospitable table. Every night he read from his Greek Testa- 

 ment, and was also skilled in French and Italian and in several indigenous 

 languages. He was a mathematician, a practised surveyor, a lapidary, and 

 a master of many arts, but always proud of his medical upbringing and of 

 his nationality. When I visited him at Lagos during my second visit to 

 Africa in 190 1 he himself accompanied me on my inspections, in order to 

 understand what I proposed to do. Dressed in a kilt and solar topee — a 

 somewhat incongruous mixture — he introduced me politely to the large black 

 ladies keeping market stalls in the bazaar ; because he wished to start a 

 " Ladies' League " against malaria in Lagos. Indeed, he gave us a great 

 luncheon to inaugurate the League, where the coloured " quality " made 



