REDEEMING THE TROPICS 



355 



and the results are so visible that the 

 work is spreading everywhere. The fight 

 of the commission and its forces is to es- 

 tablish sanitary privies in the country, 

 and to teach the children and their par- 

 ents that either the prevention of soil pol- 

 lution or the wearing of shoes will pre- 

 vent the disease, and that both together 

 insures one against it. 



The remaining problem is one of get- 

 ting the people who have the disease to 

 take the salts-thymol course of medicine. 

 In Porto Rico, Dr. Bailey K. Ashford and 

 his associates have cured well nigh half 

 a million cases, and the work is still going 

 on to the extent of some twenty thou- 

 sand cases a year. 



The entire work of Dr. Ashford in 

 Porto Rico has been a wonderful suc- 

 cess. He went there with a death rate 

 as high as that at Panama. The people 

 were hopelessly ignorant, wholly indiffer- 

 ent to sanitation, and without a single 

 idea of the cause of ordinary diseases 

 that are contracted by infection. But 

 with all that, the principles of sanitary 

 science that were laid down in Cuba tri- 

 umphed in Porto Rico as brilliantly as 

 they have triumphed anywhere else in the 

 world. Notwithstanding the fact that 

 they were handicapped for funds and 

 had hookworm disease added to their list 

 of troubles, Dr. Ashford and his aides 

 were able to bring about a death rate that 

 is lower than that of Panama itself today. 



WONDERFUL RESULTS IN THE PHILIPPINES 



What happened in Porto Rico finds 

 something of a counterpart in the Phil- 

 ippines. When the Americans took pos- 

 session of Manila the death rate averaged 

 46.11 a thousand during a period of four 

 years. By strenuous work and a faith- 

 ful adherence to the principles of sanita- 

 tion there were laid down in Cuba, the 

 death rate has been forced down until it 

 is now about 35 per thousand. 



A death rate reduced in the same pro- 

 portion in the United States, with our 

 present population, would mean a saving 

 of 1,100,000 lives annually in this coun- 

 try. They were able over there to make 

 a showing of a death rate of only 4.84 

 per thousand among the employees of the 

 Philippine government. They had chol- 

 era knocking at their doors all the time 



and several times running past their de- 

 fenses. But they have kept hammering 

 away year in and year out, and have set 

 a record in public sanitation there that is 

 a fit companion-piece to the work at Pan- 

 ama and Porto Rico. 



They have cut clown the number of 

 new cases of leprosy each year from 700 

 to 200, and have reduced the number of 

 lepers in the island from 5,000 to 2,000. 

 They had a hand in proving that beriberi 

 is a disease caused by a prolonged diet of 

 polished rice. The phosphorous in the 

 pericarp of the rice is needed by the sys- 

 tem and its absence is responsible for the 

 disease. Chickens fed constantly on pol- 

 ished rice contract the disease, while those 

 fed upon unhulled rice never do. But 

 perhaps the most striking achievement in 

 the Philippines has been the practical 

 abolition of smallpox. When we went 

 into the Philippines there were 40,000 

 deaths a year from the disease, where 

 today there are only about 300 a year. 

 Vaccination triumphed. 



THE NEW ERA 



Throughout the latitudes where insect- 

 borne diseases reign a new sentiment has 

 arisen which promises, under the stress 

 of persistent campaigns of education, to 

 sink deep into the public mind. Its motto 

 is the banishment of these diseases. 



The fundamental principles of the fight 

 are expressively laid dowii in simple 

 terms ike these : "No mosquitoes, no ma- 

 laria, no yellow fever, no dengue. No 

 fleas, no bubonic plague ; no lice, no ty- 

 phus ; no tsetse fly, no sleeping sickness ; 

 no ticks, no spotted fever." Wherever 

 governments have power to get back of 

 these campaigns and compel the people 

 willy-nilly to adopt the proper measures, 

 remarkable results can be obtained. 



Not only does sanitary science open up 

 the tropics for the benefit of man himself, 

 but for his domestic animals as well. 

 When the United States took over the 

 Philippines there had been introduced a 

 terrible epidemic among cattle, carabao, 

 and horses. The disease promptly was 

 diagnosed as the terrible rinderpest. It 

 killed untold thousands of head of horses, 

 cattle, and carabao, in some places nine 

 out of every ten dying from the disease. 



