358 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



United States has in the past 25 years, a 

 population equal to that of the Republic 

 of China might be saved from premature 

 graves. 



Surely such consequences challenge the 

 support of all mankind, and call for an 

 army of volunteers who will go out into 

 the world and preach to the people that 

 cleanliness is next to godliness, and if it 

 lacks the power to produce life, it pos- 

 sesses the power to prolong it. Such a 

 campaign would be fraught with enor- 

 mous economic, geographic, and human- 

 istic consequences, but it would require 

 long years of patient work. For if we 

 in this enlightened America, with our 

 boasted universal education and our 

 splendid free institutions, cannot success- 

 fully combat such barbaric and unneces- 



sary diseases as tuberculosis and typhoid 

 fever, it certainly would be too much to 

 expect that the ignorant masses of the 

 tropical regions would accept and live 

 up to these preachings in a few months. 



There is one redeeming feature about 

 the governments which lie within the 

 tropics. While in America the people 

 order the government to do and it is done, 

 in the tropics the government orders the 

 people to do and it is done. Whatever 

 else free institutions bring in the way of 

 blessings, they do not yield the same 

 prompt results in protecting the public 

 health that we find when tropical gov- 

 ernments decide to act. And therein lies 

 the most hopeful note in the movement, 

 now a little more than a decade old, for 

 banishing epidemic disease from the 

 tropics. 



A MEXICAN INDIAN HOME 



Photo from A. W. Cutler 



Typical family of Tehuana Indians at Tehuantepec, Mexico. The sides of the hut are made 

 of a reed and the roof is of red tile. The naked boy is very typical, as also is the pig 



