Some Aspects of Tropical Sanitation' 



BY 



The Director 



When your President did me the honour of asking me to deliver an address before 

 this influential Association, he suggested that it should deal with the subject of Tropical 

 Sanitation. While I hastened to assure him that my time and energy were both very 

 much at your service, I took exception to the title, and for two reasons. In the first 

 XJlaoe, it would have been presumptuous on my part to deal with Tropical Sanitation as a 

 whole. While I have seen something of hygienic questions in the West Indies, in a 

 sub-tropical portion of South Africa, and in certain regions of Equatoria, my experience 

 has, in the main, been confined to those tawny wastes in which, like a Phoonix from the 

 ashes, has arisen that new city of Khartoum, which, from the attention paid to it by 

 tourists and influential persons during the brief winter season, has been somewhat inaptly 

 termed tire new hub of the Universe. 



In the second place, while only thirty years ago the time at my disposal would have 

 been more than ample to discuss every aspect of the question, nowadays one cannot 

 possibly do more than touch upon the fringes of a subject which has assumed, thanks 

 to the work of Manson, Ross, Bruce, Laveran, Simpson, Finlay, Gorgas, and others too 

 numerous to mention, amazing proportions, an abiding interest, and an importance which 

 it is well-nigh impossible to overrate. I therefore begged Sir James Crichton-Browne 

 that he would permit me to modify the title and term the address " Some Aspects of 

 Tropical Sanitation," and with his usual courtesy he kindly assented. 



I might almost have chosen as the title "One Aspect of Tropical Sanitation," for it 

 seems to me that a gathering like that before me would be more interested in the aspect 

 or point of view of the Sanitary Inspector. 



Now, gentlemen, I am not a Sanitary Inspector, but I have had to perform, none 

 too efficiently x^erhaps, the duties of this onerous office, and so I can speak with some 

 experience on, and I may even say somewhat feelingly of, the subject. I have at the 

 outset a proposition to enunciate, a creed to declare, and in doing so, I speak no longer 

 from the standpoint of the inspector but from that of the Medical Officer of Health. 



It is this — that just as the non-commissioned officer is tlie backbone of the British 

 Army, so should the well-trained, certificated, sensible, honest and energetic British 

 sanitary inspector be the backbone of sanitation in our tropical colonies and dependencies. 

 Personally, I believe that certain failures in anti-malarial measures have been due to his 

 absence. I am certain that an intermediary of his type is required between the principal 

 Health Officer and the subordinates, usually natives, who carry out the tasks which in 

 this country would fall to the lot of white men. I have tried untrained men, I have tried 

 what here you would call foreigners, both the Greek and the Italian, and I have found 

 them unsatisfactory in this class of work. Despite the expense involved I advocated the 

 employment of trained British inspectors, and have, on the whole, had no reason to regret 

 the choice. Everything depends, of course, on the type of man. All are not good, all The type of 

 are not suitable for work in the Tropics, all cannot stand the strain, the disappointments, '"''" required 

 the necessity for constant alertness, the little worries, for in the Tropics the mole-hill, 



' Being a paper read at the Couference of The Sauitary Inspectors' Association, at Loudon, on August 30, 1910. 



