'258 soMi; Asi'KUTs of tuoi'ical sanitation 



in India, is of great service, and is a decided iinprovenient on the old Mosaic custom 

 wliere (as we read in IJeuteronoiuy) : — 



" Thou shall have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad ; 

 and thou slialt have a paddle upon tliy weapon, and it sliall be when tliou wilt ease thyself 

 abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shall turn back and cover that wliich cometh 

 from thee," a practice very excellent in itself, tuit impossible of realisation on a large scale 

 in the case of settled communities such as those with which we have to deal. 



You will see that in many ways our problems differ from those you have to face 

 in England. To judge from current literature, one of the most serious of the latter 

 1 he biiih-rate is the progressive lowering of the birth-rate, while the whole question of child-life and early 

 physical training is attracting earnest attention. As you are aware, your President is one 

 of the leading authorities on these matters, and on the equally ini])(irtant question of 

 the people's dietary. 



In the ancient town of Haddington many years ago a worthy gentleman lost a maiden 

 aunt to whom he had been sincerely attached. I do not know whether the lady left him a 

 legacy, but certain it is that he erected a tombstone to her pious memory, and had graven 

 on it a verse. You will agree with me that his qualities were more of the heart than of the 

 head, for this is what he wrote : 



" Here lies Miss Gourlay, 1 shall not say what, 

 But all that a woman should be she w^as that." 

 It happened that the tine new tombstone caught the eye of the old parish minister as 

 he was taking a daunder in the kirkyard. He read the epitaph, and shook his head : " Na, 

 na, Miss Gourlay," he said, " this'U no dae." Taking a piece of chalk from his pocket he 

 wrote underneath : 



" A woman should be baith a wife and a mither, 

 Miss Gourlay was neither the t'ane nor the tither." 

 Now, I tell this little story to assure you that this wise old man would have been 

 amply satisfied with the female population in the Sudan. 



It is, I believe, the case, and a matter of interest to anthropologists, that crude 

 contraceptive measures are practised at times by the Sudanese, but such can play no great 

 part in their social economy. One has only to look at the swarm of merry, black, pot- 

 bellied children on the foreshore at Omdurman to realise that the Sudanese are obeying 

 the old Scriptural injunction, " Be ye fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth." 

 I cannot give you figures, but there can be no doubt the birth-rate is high, and the sight 

 of all these cheery, fearless urchins in itself justifies, if any justification were needed, 

 the Anglo-Egyptian occupation of the Sudan. Nowadays, these children can grow up with 

 some hope for the future, and without the menace of the slave-raider, the sword, the rope, 

 the famine and the pestilence, which in tin: days of the Khalifa wrought such dire havoc in 

 the country. 



It is this question of the children which brings me to another important factor in the 

 ihi- milk Inspector's life — namely, the control of the milk supply. Most of the native infants 



"1 1'^ are breast-fed, and so far as Khartoum is concerned, the question chiefly affects the 



older children of the poor Greek and Italian communities. For those who can afford 

 it, excellent milk is available from the Government dairy farm, but its price is high, 

 and most of the milk is derived from native cows and goats. Wliich is the better, the milk 

 of the cow or goat ? The latter animal possesses two great advantages : it very rarely 

 suffers from tuberculosis, and it is cleanly in its person, thanks chiefly to the special 

 form and consistence of its excreta. It is also said to be a clean feeder. I believe that is 



