38 LOSS THROUGH INSECTS THAT CARRY DISEASE. 



that he was the only inhabitant of it. There was nothing there. 

 ' Who,' said a rich Greek to me, ' would think of going to live in 

 such a place as that? ' I doubt much whether it is the Turk who 

 has done all this. I think it is very largely the malaria." 



In considering carefully this suggestive argument of Major Koss 

 does it not appear to indicate the tremendous influence that the 

 prevalence of endemic disease must exert upon the progress of mod- 

 ern nations, and does it not bring the thought that those nations that 

 are most advanced in sanitary science and preventive medicine will, 

 other things being equal, assume the lead in the world's work? Who 

 can estimate the influence of the sanitary law^s of the Hebrew scrip- 

 tures upon the extraordinary persistence of that race through cen- 

 turies of European oppression — centuries full of plague years and 

 of terrible mortality from preventable disease? And what more 

 striking example can be advanced of the effect of an enlightened 

 and scientitically careful attention to the most recent advances of 

 preventive medicine upon the progress of nations than the mortality 

 statistics of the Japanese armies in the recent Russo-Japanese war as 

 compared with the corresponding statistics for the British army 

 during the Boer war immediately preceding, or for the American 

 Army during the Spanish war at a somewhat earlier date? 



The consideration of these elements of national progress has been 

 neglected by historians, but they are nevertheless of deep-reaching 

 importance and must attract immediate attention in this age of 

 advanced civilization. The world has entered the historical age 

 when national greatness and national decay will be based on physical 

 rather than moral conditions, and it is vitally incumbent upon na- 

 tions to use every possible effort and every jDossible means to check 

 physical deterioration. 



