MAP-CHANGING MEDICINE 



329 



the University College Hospital for the 

 creation of a modern health center in 

 London. 



Thus it is soon to come about that ade- 

 quately trained public health leaders will 

 be available to officer the health armies 

 that will never relent until the autocracy 

 of contagion is laid low. 



And what a field for work they have! 

 Among the most backward half of the 

 earth's population the annual death rate 

 ranges between 30 and 40 per thousand. 

 Among the most progressive fifth it 

 ranges from 15 down to 10 per thousand. 

 The average is around twenty-six. 



Whether there shall be upward of forty 

 million people dying every year, as at 

 present, or whether this tremendous death 

 toll shall be reduced to less than twenty 

 million, which is what experience in pro- 

 gressive states shows to be an attainable 

 goal, depends mainly on the work of sani- 

 tarians who would end the sway of con- 

 tagion throughout the earth. 



OPENING THE TROPICS TO THE CAUCASIAN 



There is another aspect to the interna- 

 tional health situation that challenges at- 

 tention. 



The most productive half of the earth's 

 surface lies within parallels of latitude 

 where contagion is most rampant. As 

 humanity expands it must look more and 

 more to the tropics for its food. 



How fast mankind is expanding few 

 people realize. Mulhall and other statis- 

 ticians tell us that the population of the 

 earth was 650,000,000 when Napoleon 

 had himself proclaimed Emperor, as com- 

 pared with 1,625,000,000 when the World 

 War began. In other words, the popula- 

 tion of the earth expanded two and a half 

 times as much from 1804 to 1914 as it 

 had from the days of Adam to those of 

 Napoleon. 



With a heavy rainfall to take the place 

 of irrigation, with rich soils, with abun- 

 dant and intense sunshine, the tropics 

 have food-producing potentialities that 

 beggar description. 



And sanitation has proven its power to 

 break the domination of the white man's 

 principal foes there — disease germs. 



The achievements of sanitary science in 

 promoting the well-being of humanity, 



GENEPAI, GORGAS (AT THE EEET) IN A 

 GUATEMALAN JUNGEE 



where it has been applied, tax belief. The 

 natural opportunities for contagion to 

 travel to the ends of the earth on the 

 wings of humanity's commerce are legion. 

 A thousand ships sail the seven seas now. 

 where one crossed them four hundred 

 years ago. Ten thousand persons travel 

 by train and automobile now, where one 

 journeyed by caravan in the days before 

 sanitation's rise. 



But even in those days, when the human 

 race didn't go beyond its own neighbor- 

 hood as much in a quarter of a century as 

 present-day civilization does in one week, 

 and when the world had less than one- 

 fifth as many people as it now has — even 

 then all nations were frequently pros- 

 trated by epidemics — terrible, calamitous 

 scourges that filled whole continents with 

 weeping and lamentation. 



Resistance was useless, for no one knew 

 how to resist. All that could be done was 

 for the sick to bury the dead, and wait 

 disconsolately for the day when the fires 

 of infection would burn themselves out 

 because there was no more fuel. 



In a single epidemic of black plague, 

 China alone lost enough of its population 



