OCTOBEE 18, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



505 



would-be historian has become alive to its 

 progress and convinced of its importance. 

 Now, I do not mean to say that our sanitary- 

 science in this country began with the Span- 

 ish war; I do not mean to say that it had its 

 origin in the tropics; for I have no doubt that 

 nearly every one who hears me could confute 

 such statements, by reference, for example, to 

 the robbing of dread diphtheria of its terrors 

 by antitoxin and other similar revolutionary 

 discoveries. And yet it is true that out of a 

 war, very short of duration, and of compara- 

 tively little importance in the number of men 

 engaged, and the cost, and the lives lost, there 

 came to this country a series of problems, the 

 most important of which included questions 

 of sanitation, the methods of transmission and 

 the cure of tropical diseases, the adoption and 

 enforcement of a system of hygienic law, and 

 the establishment in the tropics of govern- 

 mental institutions of medical research by 

 army, navy and civilian physicians, which 

 have brought to the attention of the whole 

 country the necessity for widespread reform 

 in our provisions for the maintenance of 

 health and the prevention of disease at home. 



Our responsibilities in Cuba, Porto Eico 

 and the Philippines, and now on the Isthmus 

 of Panama, have so enlarged our knowledge 

 of the possibilities of successful sanitation 

 under the most burdensome conditions, and 

 have so impressed both professional men and 

 the laymen at all familiar with conditions, 

 with the necessity for more rigid and com- 

 prehensive health laws, and a stricter enforce- 

 ment of them for the general public good, 

 that if the Spanish war resulted in nothing 

 else, it was worth greatly more than it cost, 

 in this useful development of one of the most 

 important functions that modern government 

 has to discharge, as well as in making clear 

 the need of an additional branch of general 

 education in the matter of the hygiene of the 

 home and of the individual. 



It would seem as if the tropics were the 

 proper place for the beginning of a crusade on 

 this subject. In the tropics nature has a 

 more rapid growth, not only in vegetation 

 and in animal life, but the diseases are shown 



on a larger scale and permit the study of their 

 development with more certainty of conclu- 

 sion than in the temperate zone. The effect 

 of preventive regulation upon great bodies of 

 persons is more clearly marked, and the re- 

 ward for hygienic strictness seems greater and 

 more obvious. Wlien we first went into the 

 tropics, our purpose was to make that region 

 habitable for white people. We have demon- 

 strated that as a possibility. ISTow we have 

 gone beyond the provision for those who come 

 from the temperate zone, and we are en- 

 gaged in the work of developing the tropical 

 races into a strength of body and freedom 

 from disease that they have never had before. 

 The prevalence in a whole race of the hook- 

 worm, or of malaria, or of beri-beri, the per- 

 sistence in the intestines of an entire popula- 

 tion of many varieties of disease germs which 

 do not destroy, but weaken and stunt and 

 shorten life, shows the possibility by proper 

 health methods and proper treatment of re- 

 vitalizing tropical races and securing from 

 them that vigor of physical action which will 

 enable them to develop and enjoy the marvel- 

 ous richness of the countries in which they 

 live. Of course the problem of enforcing 

 health regulations against the will of an ig- 

 norant people, whose natural laziness and re- 

 sentment at discipline makes the enforce- 

 ment most difficult, requires a strong govern- 

 ment and the raising of a sufficient fund by 

 taxation to maintain an adequate health po- 

 lice. These are the problems in the tropics 

 that every government that has dependencies 

 must meet. There is no difficulty about run- 

 ning a government cheaply if you limit its 

 functions to the mere matter of the preserva- 

 tion of peace and the administration of jus- 

 tice; but if you propose to add to these ade- 

 quate systems of education, government 

 hygiene, good roads, and other internal im- ' 

 provements, then you must look about for 

 sources of revenue which are not always forth- 

 coming, and an absence of which retards the 

 progress that every good administrator longs 

 for in the interest of the people entrusted to 

 his charge. And then if the government to be 

 established is to be more or less popular, the 



