250 



SOME ASPECTS OF TROPICAL SANITATION 



Need for 



up-to-date 



knowledge 



The 



Inspector's 



friends 



with marvellous celerity, becomes the mountain. If you want to know the kind of man 

 WE want read Sir Havelock Charles's brilliant paper to the tropical medicine section at 

 the recent meeting of the British Medical Association. You will say, as I did, " Surely 

 he describes the admirable Crichtou of antiquity ; can this paragon be found ? " and you 

 will reply, as I did, " Yes, for the old country, even in these so-called degenerate days, 

 still breeds this type of man," a fortunate thing for the British Empire and for the 

 advance of that sanitary science which in the Tropics at least signifies so much in the 

 way of health, energy and material prosperity. 



In Khartoum we now have four British inspectors, while I understand that similar 

 appointments have been made in India, that home of tropical hygiene, and elsewhere. 

 I sincerely hope the practice will become universal and that those responsible for framing 

 your curriculum and arranging your examinations will afford facilities for the study of 

 tropical hygiene and set questions — and not too easy questions — for the benefit of those 

 who are willing to profess this branch of knowledge. Furthermore, such men must be 

 well paid. Their posts must be made attractive, they should be pensionable, they ought 

 to get good leave periods, and, if thought desirable, study-leave when that is feasible. 

 Nothing is more progressive than sanitary science, and an inspector who has got a grasp of 

 local conditions and feels himself competent to cope with local problems must not rest 

 on his oars. If he is wise he will remember that his dry system of conservancy will pass 

 away, that his rough-and-ready water-supply will disappear, that his rubbish heaps or 

 home-made incinerators will give place to destructors, that it is essential for him not to 

 forget his knowledge of pipes and taps and water meters and steam blasts and the uses of 

 clinker, but to cherish the memory of these things and to keep himself abreast of aU 

 modern views and of all recent advancements. Science is at all times a hard mistress, 

 and sanitary science is especially woman-like in being so exceedingly changeable. You 

 laugh, gentlemen, but remember, it is all the better for it. In Scotland, we have an old 

 saying that changes ai"e lichtsome. I confess that sanitary changes are sometimes 

 fearsome as well. To return to our Inspector. Let us suppose we have secured him, 

 even made him sign an agreement, and landed him on the spot, which are his friends 

 and which his enemies? 



So far as the Sudan is concerned, his chief ally is the sun. It was Jennings who, 

 in speaking of the sun in Abyssinia, stated that its power was such that it could well-nigh 

 convert the smell of a pole-cat into the odour of a nosegay. There is here no doubt a 

 little poetic licence but much that is very true. For instance, it has been definitely 

 proved that in India the typhoid bacillus survives exposure to the sun for a much shorter 

 period than it can do under the same conditions in England. Doubtless, its death is as 

 much due to that desiccation, which is so fatal to nearly all the pathogenic bacteria, 

 as to the direct lethal action of the sun's rays and of the sunlight. At the same time 

 too much reliance must not be placed on the sun as an ally, for Harrison has reported 

 the recovery of typhoid bacilli from Indian dust after 77^ hours, during 23 hours of which 

 the dust had been exposed to the direct rays of the Indian sun at Easauli in the 

 Punjab, where I believe the conditions do not greatly differ from those obtaining in 

 Khartoum. It is perhaps more as a deodorising agent that the sun befriends the Sanitary 

 Inspector. Deposits of excreta rapidly dry up and become inoffensive, though, as Smith 

 has shown, in Benares, and as we have also found in Khartoum, such deposits may yet 

 serve as breeding-places for the house-fly, and not only the excretal masses themselves, 

 but the soil under them to a depth of several inches. Though the sun may thus fail to 

 prevent the house-fly breeding out, he does his kindly work later, kindly, that is, towards 



