612 . Major Ronald Ross [May 7, 



the clinical side generally have enough to do with their hospitals and 

 medical practice ; while those on the sanitary side frequently complain 

 that their recommendations are not seriously attended to. The 

 immediate responsibility Kes with the heads of the sanitary services 

 of the colonies — men who are specially paid to organise such work. 

 Now, though many capable individuals are to be found in such medi- 

 cal services, there is always a percentage of men in them, as in other 

 services, who, to be frank, are not at all capable ; men who from the 

 date of receiving their medical qualifications, take no further real 

 interest in their work, read no literature, undergo no further courses 

 of instruction, undertake no scientific researches, and make no addition 

 to our knowledge, either of medicine or of sanitation, and yet who 

 manage to obtain the highest medical or sanitary appointments, either 

 by seniority or by the well-known arts of self-service and wire-pulling. 

 I am sorry to have to express such an opinion, but I think that this 

 type of person is much too common in all branches of British adminis- 

 tration. Worse heads of departments cannot be found. They scoff 

 at the knowledge and efforts of others in order to cover their own 

 ignorance and apathy. To them all new discoveries are frauds, and 

 all new proposals are charlatanism. They repress every kind of 

 honest endeavour among their juniors ; they fill the best appoint- 

 ments with their own friends : and they truckle to their official 

 superiors in the hope of obtaining further preferment. At last, 

 decorated and pensioned, they leave the field to others of their own 

 stamp — men without an idea or an ideal, except such as refer to their 

 own advancement. These are the persons who are really responsible 

 for the state of things which I have described. 



As a rule Colonial governments are far too careless in the selec- 

 tion of the men to whom they entrust the health of the public. It is 

 openly said that they often either choose mediocrities or men who they 

 know will be too subservient to them to assert the demands of sanita- 

 tion — which is never a popular theme. At home, no one may be the 

 medical officer of health, even of an English village, without posses- 

 sing a proper diploma entitling him to practise as such ; but it appears 

 that anyone is good enough to be the chief sanitary officer of a whole 

 3ountry. The most amazing appointments are often made. Men of 

 known and approved ability are passed over in favour of others who 

 are supposed to possess special administrative qualifications — which 

 frequently means nothing but a capacity for self -advancement ; and 

 both senior and junior sanitary officers complain that their representa- 

 tions regarding anti-malaria work often receive no intelligent attention, 

 either from the civil or the military authorities. 



Root and branch reforms are required in all these respects. The 

 failure of most of our tropical dependencies, during ten long years, to 

 understand and act upon modern discoveries in connection with 

 malaria, and indeed with other diseases, demonstrates that their sani- 

 tary services no longer fulfil the purpose for which they are paid and 



