922 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1096 



its former chemical and physical methods 

 of research. 



Public health boards have been estab- 

 lished and equipped to perform under new 

 laws numerous functions which had no 

 existence until applied biology with aid 

 from chemistry and physics indicated the 

 desirable modes of public action. The 

 boards, or public health commissioners, 

 prescribe, teach and enforce rules and 

 orders concerning personal, industrial, 

 farm and dairy, and school hygiene, so- 

 cial hygiene including venereal prophy- 

 laxis for individuals and families, the 

 preservation of foods and their protection 

 from infection, the effects of various in- 

 dustries on the health of employees, the 

 connection of syphilis with insanity and 

 general paresis, and of gonorrhea with 

 blindness, procure vital statistics, estab- 

 lish registration of births and deaths, and 

 of cases of disease, study epidemics and 

 infant mortality, and contend against 

 dangerous contagious diseases by quaran- 

 tines, isolation, disinfection, and the de- 

 struction of the insect and vermin carriers 

 of disease. All these activities have been 

 completely dependent on applied biology 

 for their methods and processes, and have 

 changed and developed rapidly with the 

 progress of that science. Taken together 

 they constitute an immense contribution 

 to human welfare, present and future. 



It is animal experimentation with the 

 help of anesthesia and asepticism which 

 has given mankind by far the larger part 

 of all the exact knowledge of medicine now 

 possessed, and promises still greater ser- 

 viceableness in the future. In the service 

 of man new studies have been made, not 

 only of microscopic plants and animals, 

 but of many larger creatures which live 

 with man, such as potdtry, rabbits, guinea 

 pigs, cats, dogs, cattle, horses, mules and 

 monkeys, and of many insects, such as flies, 



ticks, mosquitoes, and lice which infest the 

 fauna and flora which surround man, or 

 the bodies or clothes of men themselves. 

 An immense mass of biological informa- 

 tion on all these subjects has been accumu- 

 lating during the past two generations, 

 and is growing rapidly from year to year, 

 as the good results of such studies become 

 better known. 



These results bear directly on the well- 

 being and happiness of the human race, 

 but also indirectly on the economic and 

 commercial fortunes of the race. Through 

 the well-directed efforts of the Eockefeller 

 Sanitary Commission hundreds of thou- 

 sands of persons in the Southern States of 

 this country have, within the last five 

 years, been made much more effective la- 

 borers, because relieved of the hookworm 

 disease; and this good work is now being 

 extended by the International Health Com- 

 mission — one of the departments of the 

 Rockefeller Foundation — ^to the West In- 

 dies, Central America, Ceylon, and the 

 Straits Settlements. The work of this 

 Commission has three divisions: (1) the 

 Commission makes surveys of regions 

 where hookworm disease is prevalent; (2) 

 then it cures multitudes of sufferers by 

 active and persistent treatment; and (3) 

 it teaches people by the thousand how to 

 prevent the recurrence of the disease in 

 farming communities by using privies and 

 wearing shoes. In the last two processes 

 it tries — often successfully — to enlist ex- 

 isting public authorities and the taxing 

 power in the work, in order to give it per- 

 manence. All this beneficent action is 

 fruit of biological research. It would have 

 been impossible to dig the Panama Canal, 

 without the effective control over yellow 

 fever and malaria which biological science 

 has given to the race within a single gen- 

 eration. Two humane contributions to 

 military efficiency during the Great "War 



