200 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
diseases. At Muhlenburg, some fourteen miles north of Monrovia, there is a 
hospital of the Lutheran Church connected with the Mission. Owing to much 
sickness and disability among the staff and their consequent absence from duty, 
not very active work was being carried on at the time of our visit.’ . 
Since Mr. Firestone has established the Firestone Plantations Company in 
Liberia, several American physicians have been maintained in connection with it. 
Dr. Paul Willis, who was Medical Director for the Company while we were 
in Monrovia, and who assisted us in many ways, was compelled on account 
of ill health to return to the United States. Dr. Justus B. Rice has succeeded him 
as Medical Director of the Firestone Plantations Company, and since Dr. Bouet’s 
departure to Cape Palmas, it is on him that the medical and sanitary work of 
Monrovia has largely devolved. Dr. Rice and his two assistants have been able 
to care medically for all of the employees of the Firestone Company, as well as to 
give assistance to many others. 
There was no doctor of medicine in the interior of Liberia and no pharmacy 
of any description. The Holy Cross Mission has established a small hospital 
at Masanbolahun near the Sierra Leone border, not far from the head of the 
Sierra Leone Railroad at Pendembu, and Dr. Edgar Maass, a German physician 
has recently been placed in charge, but was absent on leave when we were in 
Liberia. 
There had been no published record of medical conditions among the tribes 
in the interior of Liberia, or of the diseases particularly encountered there, prior 
to our visit. In order to obtain as complete an idea as possible of the extent and 
character of sickness in the interior of the country, a clinic was established in 
each village or town that we visited. Through interpreters it soon became known 
that there were white ‘‘medicine men’? among the members of the Expedition, 
and the people, naturally very curious and also generally trustful, came in large 
numbers to be treated for their various ailments. Parents often brought their 
sick children. At the stations the patients were first studied from a clinical 
standpoint and then subjected to microscopical and other laboratory examina- 
tions for diagnosis, and the needed treatment and medicine given them. When- 
ever the opportunity presented itself, microscopical and clinical examinations 
were made of large groups of people, both adults and children, particularly with 
reference to the detection of animal parasitic infections and to discover early or 
latent disease. Such examinations were carried out on children in the schools 
of Tappi ‘Town, Cape Mount, and Monrovia. A large number of pathological 
lesions were excised and preserved for sectioning and later microscopical study. 
As house to house inspection was also made in the villages in order to detect 
other cases of disease, very few sick in the vicinity escaped our notice. 
The villages themselves are on the whole clean. In general the houses are not 
dirty, in spite of the fact that chickens and goats about the towns enter the huts 
freely and frequently sleep in them. The houses seem to be swept clean each 
1 Since our return we have been informed that a physician has also been attached to the clinic of 
the Protestant Episcopal Mission at Cape Mount, and also that Dr. Wehrle, a German physician, has 
taken up private practice in Monrovia. 
