248 Miracles Ahead! 



carried off as many men as did bullets. One military authority 

 said the device may save more American lives than any other 

 single invention of the war to date. 



Colonel George F. Spann predicted that the new insecti- 

 cide, which was developed by a Department of Agriculture 

 chemist, would prove equally popular with civilians after the 

 war. "It can fumigate a house in a few minutes or annihilate 

 the crawling, buzzing 'gremlins' that take the joy out of fish- 

 ing, hunting, camping or picnicking," he declared. 



Waging War on Epidemic Diseases 



Finally Army doctors reported in May, 1943, that they had 

 developed a new treatment for malaria that gave promise of 

 "amazing" results. It was said to allow the victim to recover 

 strength and weight rapidly, and to end the recurrent chills and 

 fever caused by malaria. That was all they would say about 

 the treatment at that time. It should prove to be worth its 

 weight in gold in postwar years. Throughout the world eight 

 hundred million people suffer from malaria every year, and 

 three million of them die. 



In his book Plague on Us, 1 Geddes Smith writes that "the 

 great urban cholera and typhoid epidemics of the ipth cen- 

 tury were a logical consequence of practices that no well- 

 bred housecat would countenance." 



He quotes the description of one city's water supply given 

 by a health officer: 



"The appearance and quality of the public water supply 

 were such that the poor used it for soup, the middle class dyed 

 their clothes in it and the very rich used it for top-dressing 

 their lawns. Those who drank it filtered it through a ladder, 

 disinfected it with chloride of lime, then lifted out the danger- 



1 Smith, Geddes, Plague on Us. New York, The Commonwealth Fund, 

 1941. 



