444 EDITORIAL. 



might call time at any moment and I perhaps failed to make my meaning 

 entirely clear. 1 do not object to anything that Dr. Jackson has said. 

 We are only too well aware of the fact that we have made mistakes in 

 the past and are more than glad to have any well-meant suggestions as to 

 how we may do better in the future, but in closing permit me to say 

 that any one who talks of bringing about a general enforcement of sanitary 

 regulations throughout these Islands within a period of a few months 

 has a very imperfect conception of the problem with which we are 

 confronted. We are doing all we can with the money and men at our 

 disposal. Certainly many of the members of this association know that 

 the death roll of Americans in these Islands bears the name of more 

 than one faithful and efficient sanitary officer who has killed himself with 

 overwork. 



1 insist that it will take a much larger body of men than we now have, 

 as well as enormously increased appropriations for health purposes to 

 bring about such conditions as Dr. Jackson believes could be readily 

 secured and it should be borne in mind that I am not a pessimist on this 

 subject. 



I remember only too well that at the inauguration of our sanitai'3 r 

 work here I was called insane because I believed that we could hope to 

 accomplish certain things which have now been done, and I wish that it 

 might prove true that Dr. Jackson is right and that I am wrong. The 

 picture which Dr. Jackson has painted of conditions in our provinces 

 and municipalities is absolutely true to life. The practical question is 

 "what are we going to do about it" ' J . We are not at all sensitive over 

 having our past shortcomings criticised and what we particularly desire 

 is a practical illustration of how it ought to be done. Nothing would 

 afford me greater pleasure than to approve the appointment of Dr. Jack- 

 son as a district health officer and to afford him all possible support 

 in an effort to realize in only a single health district his expectations as 

 to what may be done. 





