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mainly true, and I speak from twenty years' experience of 

 the matter. There is no skilled and responsible head em- 

 powered to direct and enforce even the most obvious 

 movements in connection with our Imperial sanitary and 

 medical services. It is disgraceful that in scientific matters, 

 concerned with the life and death of thousands, scientific 

 men should be so absolutely subordinated to unscientific 

 men. Gross defects exist also in the executive of these 

 services. The many able and energetic men whom they 

 possess are disgusted by the absence of scope for their 

 powers or recognition for their services ; while, on the 

 other hand, the most perfunctory, incapable, and out-of-date 

 officials seem generally to rise by the mere vis inertia of 

 their apathy, so congenial to their surroundings, and con- 

 tinue to rise in spite of the gravest incapacity.* Under 

 such a condition of anarchy it is hopeless to look for any 

 immediate concerted action against mosquitoes from the 

 public sanitary services ; and it is for this reason that I 

 have so frequently appealed in the present work to the 

 initiative of private enterprise. It is public opinion alone 

 which has created the sanitation of civilised countries ; and 

 it is only public opinion which will enforce sanitation in 

 the tropics. Sensible men living in countries which are 

 persecuted by mosquito-borne diseases should remember 

 these facts, and should endeavour to further the cause of 

 prevention, not only by constant agitation, but by their 



* A great deal of the opposition experienced by recent discoveries in 

 connection with mosquito-borne disease is due to such people, whose real 

 object in making the opposition is to save themselves the trouble of acting on 

 the scientific information obtained. 



