The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1912-06-15

and Galatians from Spain, Greeks, Gre
tans, Portuguese, Polacks, Italians
Germans, Observation-Disclosures away
from the Panamanian canal or other
tropical jobs, some of them tropical
tramps,' fugitives and adventures
from all over Christendom, men that
drift from contractors camp to con
tractors camp through the equatorial
regions. from the Amazon to the.
Ganges, and back again to the ANA
zon by way of Zanzibar. And in
those six thousand working on the
Madeira Mamore railway must not be
induced matter of some two thous-
and or so whose bodies have been
buried or have sunk in the black river.
How overtime Robert Louis Steven.
sons ina gination would have worked
in this exotic atmosphere
Now there, doctors whose business
it is to keep fevers away from these
workers, and to dose those who have
careless,y got up temperatures, toI
dose them sufficiently for work to be-
got out of them, or until they siCkenI
beyond the ability to work, when they
are either humanely sent back down
the river to the coast" or they die inI
, that pesti'ent country. In the ANA
zon Jungle railroad building is a mat
ter of sanitation rather than of en-,
gineerng; and the makers of the rail
( way now under construction there,
like those who are achieving the
Panama canal, have Done what they.
have done with the doctor as pioneer.
Each force of workers has its doctor,
armed with quinine and revolver, to-
see that the medical bullets enter the
economy at the minimum rate of ten.
grains a day; he who (either digger or.
engineer in charged does not take his
medicine at once gets his time and his
dismissal
/ The doctor is boss of the line His
office or field hospital may be a palm
shack or a box car; but one or the
other is a part of each construction
camp, and his authority is paramount.
He NAV have come just from hospital
in Baltimore, Washington or New
York; without the ability to raise even
a little down on his upper lip, let
alone a bearG, he nevertheless is des-
pot over five hundred. If any among
these get seriously sick, despite his
prophylaxis, he orders them back to
the big, well-equipped modern hospital
at Porto Velho, which has a force of
physicians and trained women nurses,
mostly from these United States. Here
the Amazon mosquito, which transmits
the presidential bacteria, is screened
against. All the houses of Ameri
cans are doub' e-screened; and ever
thin shacks are screened. The sys
TEN = not yet perfect enough to make
the laborers use screens; for many O
these are contemptuous of mosquitoes
and must rely upon quinne for what
ever immunity they can get. The las
reported oruer sent in by the company
building this railway was for one mil
lion five-grain capsules, which forced
the recipient drug house to beg for {
few months warning before receiving
an order Of the same kind.
7 A diverting incident is related by
the New York Evening Post: A Carl
puma Indian came into a construction
camp suffering from acute indigestion
For his comfort the doctor painted the
skin over the epigastrium with iodine;
and thus decorated, the Caripuna Went
back proudly into the Jungle. In day
or two he returned with all the inhabi
tants of his village; all were desiriou.
of 70 lowing the fashion that had thus
been set. All men, women and chill
dren complained of stomach ache anC
signified their wish to be painted, g
la mode, like the first. The doctor
graciously complied ana decorated al
and singly. 70 vary the monotony OF
the proceedings and to give the SUI
premest touch of style, he drew cir
Giles on some stars on others, cres
cents on others and stripes on still
others. The delighted Caripunas de
parted, feeling, no doubt, as Ameri
cans do when they have been to Paris
There again in the Amazon jungle
is demonstrated what for a score Of
years past has been manifest in India
in Africa, in the West Indies and most
resplendently in our Canal zone. For
merly the tropics were death to the
white man; today our superb con
'freres, the medical missionaries Of this
era, are demonstrating by their prac
tice of the modern sciences of bacte
riology and prophylaXis that the trop
les can be freed of infection and pesti
lence, that the earth between cancer
and capricorn can be made habitable