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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 929 



people themselves must be educated to under- 

 stand the importance of the hygienic restric- 

 tions, to accept them, and themselves to im- 

 pose upon themselves the burden of taxation 

 which it is essential for them to carry in 

 order that any progress shall be made at all. 

 I consider it a proud record of the Ameri- 

 can army that through its medical corps en- 

 gaged in hygienic work, so many important 

 discoveries as to the transmission of disease 

 and the method of stopping its spread, have 

 been given or proven to the world, and all of 

 this is dated chiefly from the time of the 

 Spanish war. The elimination of black 

 smallpox by thorough vaccination, the study 

 of bubonic plague, its mode of transmission, 

 suppression of its causes and its methods of 

 treatment, the study of cholera and its method 

 of treatment, together with the preventive in- 

 oculation, the study of beri-beri, and the meth- 

 ods of its prevention and cure which have not, 

 even as yet, been altogether satisfactory, the 

 learning of the causes of yellow fever by 

 transmission through the mosquito and its 

 method of treatment so as by isolation of 

 both the patient and the mosquito to prevent 

 its spread in a community, and its ultimate 

 suppression, the minimizing of the bad effects 

 of malaria by the destruction of the mosquito 

 which carries its poison, the ridding a race of 

 the hookworm and its demoralizing physical 

 degeneration, the prevention of typhoid by 

 inoculation, all constitute great steps forward 

 in the treatment of diseases that though most 

 of them are especially formidable in the trop- 

 ics, are general also in the temperate zone, 

 and in these discoveries which have been 

 made, it is most satisfactory to be able to say 

 that our American physicians have taken and 

 are taking a most important and honorable 

 part. It is very certain that but for these 

 discoveries the construction of the Panama 

 canal, which now since 1904 has been going 

 on with giant strides, and which will be com- 

 pleted within a year, would have been impos- 

 sible. The effort of the French to build a 

 much smaller canal at the same place would 

 doubtless have been successful but for the 

 problems of hygiene which the science of that 



day did not enable them to solve. And now 

 it is proper that the chief health officer in 

 charge of that strip forty miles long by ten 

 miles wide, who has enabled 50,000 people 

 to live there in health and build the canal, 

 should share with the chief engineer the 

 honors when the end shall crown the work. 

 It was most fortunate in working out the 

 problems that these agents of health on the 

 Isthmus had no limitation put upon them 

 with respect to expense, and that everything 

 was at their hand to accomplish the purpose 

 of the nation. Other problems which shall 

 arise in the future may not be so fortunately 

 circumstanced, and economy and the limita- 

 tions of expense may call attention to the 

 necessity for finding changes in method which 

 shall reduce the cost of the work and bring it 

 within reasonable figures, but it is well that 

 the first effort was not hampered by such con- 

 siderations. Of course, while the great prob- 

 lem was the problem of the maintenance of 

 the healthfulness of the Isthmus during the 

 construction of the canal, there still remains 

 the important one of keeping the atrip health- 

 ful while the canal is operated. 



The possibilities of improvement through 

 governmental hygiene of tropical countries 

 are so great that it makes one who has any 

 conception of what they are grow enthusiastic 

 in the contemplation of what centuries may 

 bring forth in this regard. Of course, one of 

 the things that will have to be brought about 

 is effective and efficient government in the 

 tropics, and how this is to be reconciled with 

 the growing tendency toward more and more 

 popular government is a question of the edu- 

 cation of the people in governmental respon- 

 sibility. Still the amount which can be done 

 in the enforcement of principles of hygiene 

 with the tropical races and with those who live 

 in the tropics, has already had sufficient 

 demonstration to make one with any imagina- 

 tion at all anxious to look forward to the 

 development of the world around its middle 

 after the temperate zone shall have been occu- 

 pied to such an extent as to make the enter- 

 prising of their inhabitants look elsewhere for 

 migration and settlement. The mere matter of 



