The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-08-18

(Everys part of the. country IS lnIer-
 tested in the Quarantine Station at the
 Port of New York. for immigrants passing through it scatter to every l state and almost every city and town l Quarantine work in most ports or the F United States is in the hands of fed EleraI authorities, but in New Y ork the
 state still controls Recently there I5has been much discussion of turning
 this over to the government, as Bos- l5ton did a short time ago. Speaklns from his experience with the federal health officers in the PhilhpInes aac 1.otfler pIague-infected regions, ex-
 President Taft is an eager advocate
 of the federal plan The following is digest of a paper prepared by MT laTaft forssthe New York Academy oi Medicine and reproduced here by his l2persona1 permission. It is especial 1 ily timely because Of the heavy ir1r1i- grafton expected at the close of the lwar, some of it no doubt from the countries through which, typhus and lcholera. have swept) ~
 | ( Exclusive Service THE SURVEY | Press Bureau.)
 For many years I have been inter ested in the subject of preventive med icine T have had official responsi- bdhty with respect to it's investigation and it's work.
 
 1 dep1ore war. did in some respects great good. It brought the Aner1- can profession of medicine into active study of tropical diseases. It brought the Army Medical Corps, the Naval Medical Corps and the Public Health Service of the federal government in to situations that stimulated their activity. And venture to say that the work of all these corps since we went into Cuba in 1898 has reflected the highest credit on the American profession of medicine. For in this time there has beeA greater progress ndae in the discovery and treatment of tropical diseases than in the hum dred years before America had res ponshbility for health in the tropics. The discovery with reference to that little busy4body, the mosquito, profession of medicine. For in this time there has been greater progress made in the discovery and treatment of tropical diseases than in the hum dred years before America had re-. sponsFbdlity for health in the tropics. The discovery with reference to that little busy -body, the mosquito, through Drs. Reed. Lazier and Cor gas, was worth all the money. certain ly. that was expended in the Spanish war;
 A War with Cuban Yellow Fever
 The truth is that the Cuban war was a war with disease. The inter national nuisance that Cuba had be- come was largely due to the yellow fever, and to the dangerous proximity to that country from which ships came constantly to our shores.
 The suggestion has been made that the United States goveFnJnentss g health bureaus had not a large enough aes1- perience to be trusted with quaran7 v mi f=ef- through with some of our experiences to see whether that is true.
 We did away with the yellow fe- yer mosquito in Cuba through our Army Medical Corps. In Panama. we tackled the ma1aria1 mosquito. In the Philippines we had plague, small pox, berfberi and cholera We had there D. Richard Strong, now Pro of Tropical Diseases at Harvard, who did so much in China, Dr. J. A. Perry and Dr. Victor G.sHeiser of the. Pub lie Health Service, who took charge of the entire health of the<. PhiIli-z pines and conducted the quarantine at every port. And when one is a quar- antine officer in the Philippines, in the neighborhood& of China and the Orient, he has to- be, if I may use the technical expression, lon the job.'
 We had smallpox and vaccinated ten million people in the Phi1lipines Some critic will remark that there were only eight million inhabitants some were yaccinated twice! We had forty thousand cases a year then; now there are only few hundred. In some of the provinces there were 5000 eases a year. After everyone was svaccinated there were no, cases at all
 Then berfberi. This disease it is said. we do not understand in the fed
  treating it when [ was in the Phtl1f- pines and have been at it eyer since. think they have discovered now what the trouble is-polished rice. If those who make rice the chief, part of their diet would eat rough or un- hulled rice they would not get the disease. If this proves to be the cause, there is certainly great hope that we can prevent great destruction of life from the disease. We had cholera in the PhilIipines- even an epidemic of it. This was due chiefly to the difficulty of keeping people away from the river which was the water supply of the city. We stationed cavalry along the river banks to keep the people back We introduced. the cholera serum and Dr. Strong applied it. We put in a new water supply and sewage system, pumping sewage into the sea, and as last made Manila as healthy a place as there Is in the tropics
 Plague and Leprosy.
 We had plague out there We learned something from Japan and instituted what they have long had in Japan--crusades against rats.
 Then there is our federal exper- fence with leprosy. When we went there, there was one 1eper hospital in Manila, another in Camerines, and the treatment of the Iepers in the out lying districts was most cruel We took a census of the Iepers and found there were ten or fifteen thousand. Then they were gathered together and taken to a Beautiful island and given houses and farms Now they are as happy as people can hel xzlaca have tI,at 15i-aa-...