The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-09-16

w NdsilllSlollt SeplSHlbtI lt-Nopecldl,J-
 Governor Magoon of Cuba recently re-
 ported to the authorities in Washington
 that the outbreak of yellow fever in the
 island would be conquered before the end of September. This is one of several recent happenings indicating how the doc tor who may perhaps never make a cure has Vlndicated his right to a high posi-
 tion in the medical profession. Yellow
 fever appeared in Cuba this year. Yet
 nobody was seriously alarmed, although
 there was some natural exasperation se-
 cause the Cubans could not or would
 not continue in practice the things which
 they had been taught by physicians and
 experts from the United States. The is-
 land again being under American control,
 steps were promptly taken to give yell
 low jack his quietus and national de-
 partment of sanitation was created to
 have full control of sanitary conditions
 Even before this was done Ciefuegos was
 given a house cleaning, such as 1t had
 never before known. The men who de-
 vote themselves to the prevention of dis
 ease won signal victory in Cuba i'm
 mediately after the Spanish-American
 war. Had they continued in charge of
 the situation, it is extremely doubtful if
 the few recent cases of the once dreaded
 scourge would nave appeared in the is- land.
 On the isthmus of Panama. through out the canal zone where the Americans have full swing. yellow fever has been
 conquered for the first time In the his
 tory of that region In a recent interview Dr. Paul M Carpenter of Milton, Mass, chief of the sanitary department in the zone town of Empir,, says that so thor
 oughly has the war the troublesome
 mosquito been carried on that although
 every bed Is provided with mosquito 1att fnor dnfn Toll
 Into disuse In hundreds of bedrooms, although the mosquito netting is still vis
 ible. it hangs looped from the ceiling
 and is never dropped about the bed"
 Every intelligent American knows that,
 when the mosquitoes have been killed off
 and proper sanitary regulations enforceap the danger of the spread of yellow fever
 has been practically eliminated
 Of course, yellow fever will appear from time to time, notwithstanding the | fight waged against it. In 1905 there was in New Orleans what was, according to present ideas, an epidemic; yet 1t was small indeed. when compared with the ravages of the same scourge before the doctors had discovered the pernicious ac- | tivties of the mosquitoes and begun their wars upon these pests. Thus, in 1878, In an epidemic in the Mississippi valley. 15.- | 934 people died and the number of cases exceeded 74,000.
 Even before the adoption of modern
 methods in combating the disease, some- thing had been accomplished by strict
 quarantine regulations. During the first sixty years of the nineteenth century, yellow fever prevailed almost annually In one or more of the southern seaports of
 the United States and frequently extend ed Its ravages to interior towns In fact
 the permanent residents of southern cities nT1 1TT1nn n n climate, and a necessary evil against which 1t was useless to impose quaran- | tine restrictions.
 The fight with yellow fever may be re- | 6arded as already won. The battle with | the great white scourage is being waged with increasing vigor throughout the l world. and 1t Is confidently predicted that | the time Is coming when tuberculosis will | be almost as rare as smallpox. Typhoid is also regarded as doomed although 1t is still a serious menace in all parts of
 the world. And the activities of the doc tors who devote their talent and energy to prevention rather than cure are not confined to the battle with contagious and infectious diseases. A noted physician
 in Boston has built up a large practice
 among people who are perfectly well, and who go to him at stated intervals
 so that, acting under his advite, they may keep well.
 Ino uulNerSitlcS dro DeS1nn1nRa to make special provisions for the train ing of the men who will in the future devote themselves to stamping out dis
 ease rather than to curing 1t after 1t has attacked mankind. Thus the George Washington university in this city
 numbers among its faculty Gen. George M. Sterling, who holds the title of Professor of Preventive Medicine. Gen eral Sterling, who was surgeon general of the United States army from 1893
 until 1902. learned by practical experi- ence how to deal with contagious dis
 cases for he served through numerous
 cholera and yellow fever epidemics, had
 command of the medical service in the war with Spain and was a member and
 secretary of the Havana Yellow Fever commission of the National Board of
 Health in 1879.
 General Sterling, whose writings in the sciences of preventive medicine are recognized as those of one of the worlds foremost authorities, in an ar tcle which appears among this years publications of George Washington uni versity, shows that the modern, scien- tihc warfare against disease Is being carried on in all parts of the world Americans have conquered yellow fever
 in it's home In the tropics. On the other
 side of the globe, Japan's war with Russia revealed how well the little
 brown men could do in keeping their
 soldiers safe from attacks by disease
 and giving the lie to the old aSser- tion that more men are killed in war
 by sickness than by bullets. It Is i'm teresting to note. In this connection, that it was Japanese, trained in the laboratory of the famous Professor Koch of Berlin, who discovered the minute bacillus which is the cause of the plague for centuries the worlds greatest scourge. Statements of the mortality in epidemics of plague seem scarcely believable in these days of the twentieth century. Sixty-eight thous- and people died of the disease in Lon don in 1865; 76,000 died in Vienna in 1879: it killed 10000 in Stockholm in 1704. A brief epidemic in central Eu- aotf ta1 h otya nod