September 18^ 1914] 



SCIENCE 



405 



that the city, and not the country, is too in- 

 tolerably duU for a permanent residence. 

 The American college of agriculture does not 

 do this, and the main cause of its failure is 

 that the kind of agricultural problems which 

 are presented, discussed and worked with in 

 its classes, are not the kind which it is prac- 

 ticable for a farmer to work with after he 

 graduates. The graduate is not equipped to 

 find employment for his intellect on the farm. 

 The theses in all this writing are: 

 First: the American college course in agri- 

 culture is basically wrong. Plant industry as 

 a science must rest on an understanding of 

 plants. 



Second: the mistake of not giving this 

 understanding results not merely in the waste 

 of considerable time, and in making poorer 

 farmers than might be produced, but results 

 also in the failure of the college to check, aa 

 it should be expected to do, the movement, 

 from the farm to the city, of the country's 

 best blood. E. B. Oopeland 



SANITATION IN VESA CBUZ 

 The Vera Cruz correspondent of the Journal 

 of the American Medical Association writes 

 that the hot season, which is also the rainy 

 season, begins in Vera Cruz in May or June 

 and lasts until the end of September, and as 

 the season advances the tendency is for the 

 death and morbidity rate for all diseases to 

 increase, due to the heat itself, and the rapid 

 increase in the amount of malaria; yet thanks 

 to the effective work of our sanatoriums, this 

 year is an exception, in that the civil death- 

 rate for July is practically no greater than for 

 June, in which month it was lower than the 

 average. The civil death-rates per thousand 

 of population, per annum, for the months of 

 June and July for the past five years for the 

 city of Vera Cruz are given below; the im- 

 provement for July of this year is too great 

 to be accidental or due to anything but im- 

 proved sanitation. 



June July 



1910 3S.86 46.86 



1911 38.29 46.86 



1912 44.86 49.72 



1913 36.86 41.15 



1914 32.00 32.58 



A comparative statement of the civil deaths 

 from communicable diseases for June and 

 July of this year is as follows: 



June July 



Typhoid fever 1 



Malaria 8 2 



Smallpox 4 1 



Dysentery 12 4 



Tuberculosis 19 26 



Diarrhea and enteritis, under 2 years ... 19 14 

 Diarrhea and enteritis, 2 years and over. 28 23 



The increase of deaths from tuberculosis is not 

 unusual during the hot weather; the smallpox 

 epidemic is over and there are now no cases 

 in the city; between May 18 and July 31, 

 66,432 persons were vaccinated; revaccinations 

 are now being made when indicated but gen- 

 eral vaccination ceased with the end of July. 

 The principal gain is due to the fall in the 

 death-rates for malarial and intestinal dis- 

 eases and this improvement is directly due to 

 our preventive measures. 



The antimalarial measures which affect the 

 civil population are three: the suppression of 

 mosquito breeding, the use of the army labo- 

 ratory in establishing the correct diagnosis, 

 and the following up and treatment of all 

 proved carriers of gametes in the blood. 

 Mosquito-breeding has been largely suppressed 

 by the extensive and intricate system of ditches 

 in the environs of the city, totaling about 25 

 mUes in length; miles of vacant lots and 

 hundreds of acres of swamp at the bases of the 

 gigantic sand-dunes behind the city have been 

 drained by the Health Department, and it is 

 now possible to sleep comfortably in almost all 

 parts of the city without the use of mosquito- 

 bars, something heretofore unknown at the 

 height of the rainy season. 



Malaria has been made a reportable disease 

 by the Health Department and demonstration 

 of the parasite in the blood is insisted on as 

 far as possible. All houses where proved cases 

 of malaria have occurred have been visited by 

 inspectors trained in mosquito extermination, 

 and secondary cases have been so far prac- 

 tically unknown. As a result of a partial 

 malarial survey of the city, it has been found 

 that the disease is principally localized along 

 the railroad and the railroad yards. Further 

 investigations along this line are now under 



