New-York tribune., 1901-11-05
HEALTH CONDITIONS IN CUBA.

This country's policy in Cuba has been
| assaied at times with unreasoning vehemence
| both by captious pessimists ut home and by
| political irreconciables in Havana. But even
| in their most irritable moments neither Amerl-
| can nor Cuban critics have denied 1t one splen-
did and conspicuous triumph-the physical reha-
bilitation of the Cuban capital. Time only serves
| TO emphasize the value and solidity Of the work
| of sanitation begun in January. 1899. by Cen
eral William Ludlow and pushed with unre-
mitting energy by his successors in the military
government. After nearly three years of con
slant renovation the skill of the American San1-
tary engineer has done its perfect work. and
Havana, within a decade one Of the sickiest Of
the worlds great cities. has risen to place Of
honor among those freest from the conditions
which breed contaglon and disease.
1t has been generally supposed that the effort
of the American Engineer Corps was directed
chiefly. if not wholly. toward the eradication of
q single epidemic scourge. To combat yellow
fever-a pest whose readiness TO spread to our
own shores was so keenly dreaded-was, Indeed.
the first aim of the crusade begun by General
Ludlow against the sanitary abuses to which
Cuban custom had long been welded. OF the
ricor and thoroughness of that crusade there
can be no question. and on Its signal success
the American military administration can base
an unassailahle claim not alone 10 Cuba's graft
tude but to the gratitude of the whole Western
world. Yellow fever has, indeed, practically
ceased to threaten public health in the new
Havana According to a statement just issued
by the Insular Affairs Division OF the War
Department, only two persons died from yellow
fever in Havana last September. Yet the aver
age Of deaths for September in the lnst eleven
years has been ffty-two The yellow fever
v@-{r1 FIt~fe
year. for the six months In which the fever had
formerly become epidemic, only five deaths are
shown by the official record For the same
period in 1899 there Sc deaths. and in
1897 65a deaths while for the last eleven years
the average has been 1856
But in the train of the American war against
the disease most feared as possible invader Of
our own Gulf ports has come increased exemp
ticn from the ills which to the Cuban native
have far more real and imminent terrors than
Yellow Jack. The general death rate in Havana
has been more than cut in half under the Amer
lean occupation. In September. 1S9S-the year
Of the war-there were 2307 deaths from all
causes in Havana. The September average for
the eleven years from 1889 to 1900 was SIT. In
September. 1901 the number of deaths fell to
$50. For September, 1890, when the lowest pre-
rious number of deaths was reported, the city's
death rate was 34.4S thousand; for Septem-
Der of this year it was only 15.64-well below
that Of the great majority Of American cities.
Much of the sanitary work In Havana to which
this halving of the death rate is due
accomplished at the cost of repeated native
crumblings at added burdens Of taxation it
involved. But now that skill and patience have
solved problem long abandoned as insoluble,
il is inconceivable that Cuban sentiment should
not accept and rejoice in the results of the
American engineering programme-dsturbin
and expensive as it may have been. 1t should
be at once the ambition and the duty of n
native insular government to keep Havana what
American seems now to have made it-one
of the most habit3be and attractive Of tropical
caDitalS