190 Timehri. 



We have then the picture of the Government compelling estate 

 authorities to submit to a certain line of campaign (and with different 

 men we have often enough different methods, and no continuity of policy), 

 while villages more or less under Government control lie neglected 

 without even a drinking water supply, and little or no effort made to bring 

 them into line with the policy the estates are compelled by the Medical 

 Authorities to adopt ! 



We have Georgetown described by Dr. K. S. Wise, appointed this 

 year as Surgeon General of Trinidad, as a city veritably floating on 

 sewage. We have New Amsterdam without even any attempt at sanitation 

 — in this respect even remarkably worse than Georgetown, while the state 

 of the villages may be gathered from the condition of our city and town. 

 Is it any wonder that our villages are riddled with ankylostomiasis, when 

 the drinking water where there is any, is an open trench befouled in the 

 most abominable way, and when our Bacteriologist suggests that some 

 effort at cleanliness should be instilled into our school children, he is 

 ridiculed by at least one clerical manager. 



We have also the awful problem of Malaria. Let us quote Dr. Wise : 

 " The Baby-Saving League, the Tuberculosis Society, medical 

 inspection of schools and general public health measures are all sub- 

 ordinate to this primary problem ; they are gravely handicapped and 

 prevented from attaining full measure of success by the ravages of malaria, 

 the control of which would at once bring them half their objects. Malaria 

 is the pivot on which most of our problems of public health balance ; its 

 basal influence is the substratum from which our difficulties arise. This 

 is not exaggeration. 



Malaria is omnipresent as the light and wind, a blight on our land 

 checking and distorting the growth of the community. Bathed in malaria 

 and saturated with its poison the people are handicapped at birth, live in 

 infancy and childhood with a millstone round the neck, while those who 

 survive resent an influence they do not understand." 



This indictment is a most damning one and when one adds to the 

 picture the dread and horrible disease of tilaria with which so alarming a 

 proportion of our people are now afflicted, it is time for us to demand that 

 every nerve must be strained to control these diseases. Indeed to attempt 

 to bring people into this colony unless we are prepared to act, appears 

 under the circumstances as simple wickedness. Further if our education- 

 alists only " labour to stuff the memory," to quote Montaigue " and leave 

 the conscience and understanding unfurnished and void," what can we 

 expect of our future ? 



The loss in efficiency from a people so afflicted by malaria and filaria, 

 if put down in pounds, shillings and pence, would no doubt stagger us. 



Again we would point out that, if under these terrific handicaps we 

 have made such progress, wo may expect indeed to see British Guiana 

 come into her own when the demon of Malaria is beaten under foot. 



