154 ANIMAL LIFE AND HUMAN PROGRESS 



It is not too much to say that, in 1909, a new chapter 

 opened in the history of disease-prevention when the interest 

 of Mr. John D. Rockefeller was successfully enlisted in the 

 problem of hookworm control. The Rockefeller Sanitar 

 Commission, during the succeeding five years, found that 

 " more than two million people in the Southern States were 

 infected with hookworm, involving vast suffering, partial 

 arrest of physical, mental, and moral growth, great loss of 

 life, and noticeable decrease in economic efficiency over vast 

 regions." The Commission also ascertained from extensive 

 inquiries that in the inhabited territory between thirty degrees 

 north and south of the equator more than a thousand million 

 people harbour the parasite ; that infection in some nations 

 rises to nearly 90 per cent of the entire population ; that this 

 disease has probably been an important factor in retarding 

 the economic, social, intellectual and moral progress of 

 mankind, and that even where it is most severe little or 

 nothing is being done towards its arrest or prevention. 



In 1913 Mr. Rockefeller endowed the International Health 

 Board with one hundred million dollars " to extend to other 

 countries and peoples the work of eradicating hookworm 

 disease," and to establish agencies for the promotion of public 

 sanitation and the spread of scientific medicine. 



By December 1915 nearly one and a half million people 

 had been examined, and of these 593,383 were subsequently 

 treated. During 1916 specially organised campaigns were in 

 progress in the Southern States of America, in the West Indies, 

 in British and Dutch Guiana, in Egypt and in Ceylon. The 

 methods followed so successfully enlisted the confidence and 

 co-operation of the people that the vast majority voluntarily 

 submitted to examination and treatment. In British Guiana 

 94- 4 per cent of the population within the region of operations 

 were examined ; of these, 62-3 per cent were found to be 

 infected and 84-3 per cent of the infected were cured. In St. 

 Vincent 99' 9 per cent of the people within the area submitted 

 to examination and 84-9 per cent of the infected were cured 

 A beginning only has been made in this beneficent work. 



