290 THE RELATIONS OF ANIMALS TO DISEASE 



The prevention of hookworm hes in sanitary toilets and in 

 proper covering for the feet. The remedy for the disease is very 

 simple : thymol, which weakens the hold of the hookworm, 

 followed by Epsom salts. 



A family suffering from hookworm disease. Proper treat- 

 ment freed them from more than 10,000 hookworms. After 

 they were cured, the father raised a big crop of cotton and got 

 out of debt ; and the children made good progress in school. 



For years a large area in the South undoubtedly has been 

 retarded in its development by this parasite ; hundreds of millions 

 of dollars have been wasted and thousands of lives have been 

 needlessly sacrificed. The Rockefeller Foundation has made a 

 study of conditions all over the world and finds that in almost all 

 semitropical countries the hookworm is present and that in some 

 parts of the world almost all the people are infected. 



''The hookworm is not a bit spectacular: it doesn't get itself discussed 

 in legislative halls or furiously debated in political campaigns. Modest and 

 unassuming, it does not aspire to such dignity. It is satisfied simply with 

 (1) lowering the working efficiency and the pleasure of living in something like 

 two hundred thousand persons in Georgia and all other Southern states in 

 proportion ; with (2) amassing a death rate higher than tuberculosis, pneu- 

 monia, or typhoid fever ; with (3) stubbornly and quite effectually retarding 

 the agricultural and industrial development of the section ; with (4) nullifying 

 the benefit of thousands of dollars spent upon education ; with (5) costing the 

 South, in the course of a few decades, several hundred millions of dollars. 

 More serious and closer at hand than the tariff ; . . . making the menace of 

 the boll weevil laughable in comparison — it is preeminently the problem of 

 the South."- — Atlanta Constitution. 



