COAL-TAR 67 



and individual happiness caused by the abolition of 

 malarial mosquitoes in a community whose inhabitants 

 have shaken for generations with "fever and ague?" 



In many warm countries the energy of 80 per 

 cent, of the population is being continually sapped 

 by the hookworms which they carry about with them 

 but which may be expelled by thymol, one of the ben- 

 zene compounds. I quote a single minor incident in 

 the anti-hookworm campaign from the 1921 Report of 

 the Rockefeller Foundation: 



Three estates in Sumatra which, in spite of all recommendations, 

 refused to adopt hookworm control measures, had in the course of 

 two and one half years 4,657 admissions to the hospital. Three 

 other estates with a laboring force of the same size which did adopt 

 these measures had only 1,034 admissions a difference of 78 per 

 cent. One hospital admission represented on the average twenty- 

 two days of treatment, which, reckoned at fifty cents a day, meant 

 an aggregate loss of no less than 40,000 guilders during a period of 

 only two and one half years. 



A striking illustration of the possible importance of a 

 coal-tar compound comes to hand as I am writing this. 

 The Germans are talking of trading off Bayer 205 for 

 their lost African colonies. Bayer 205 is a secret 

 synthetic medicine, presumably a coal-tar derivative 

 like the previously known remedies of the sort, which is 

 supposed to be a sure cure for the sleeping sickness. It 

 is said to be fatal to the trypanosomes, the minute 

 creatures with whip-like tail and spiral movement, that 

 invade the blood of men and cattle in tropical Africa 

 and bring them to a stupor that ends in death. These 

 microbes are conveyed and injected by the tsetse fly, as 

 fevers are by mosquitoes. The opening up of trade 



