Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-09-11
MILITARY SURGEONS;
By Frederic ]: Haskin
[Continued From Editorial Page.l


oism that brought lasting benefits to
the world.
But because of the establishment
of the manner of the transmission of
yellow fever, it was made possible to
dig the Panama canal, to make Cuba
habitable, Manila safe as place to
live, to stop the recurrence of plaques
at American ports, to bring new pos
sipilities to the topical countries of
all the world, to save hundreds of
thousands of lives every year on
through all the decades and centuries
of the future.
Military Surgeons Responsible
From the standpoint of the benefit
derived by humanity, the discoveries
of methods of fighting these two dis
eases are the most important events
of the present generation. Military
surgeons are responsible for them.
1t fell to the military surgeons of
the United States to go into Manila,
a plague hole of the East, and make
1t demonstration plant of the eff
cheney of sanitation. There they
demonstrated their theory that fleas,
living on rats, are the bearers of bu-
bonic plague, and freed the city of
1t by killing the rats-a process that
has since been applied to many ports.
1t was there that they whipped Asiatic
cholera, which had been known to
kill 10000 in single year. 1t was
there that they went forth and vac
cinated 100000 people and drove
smallpox from the land. a process
that was later repeated in Cuba and
Porto Rico.
These military surgeons found an
other problem when they went to
Porto Rico. There upon the hillsides
dwell a race of people unthinkably
poor, shabby, degenerate-a race with
only sufficient energy to sit in the sun
as death crept upon them. The Span
ish, the French, the English, had own
ed such islands inhabited by such peo-
peoples for centuries and had COM
planned of their worthlessness and
shiftlessness.
Discovery of Hookworm
Major Bailey K. Ashford was the
young American surgeon who was
sent into Porto Rico. He had not been
there six months when he announced
that the Porto Ricans were not suffer-
ing from laziness but from disease.
There was among them a malady that
was responsible for 80 per cent. of
the deaths of the island. A thousand
of them were dying each month from
it. There was within them a parasite,
the hookworm, that sapped their vi
tality and converted them into the
miserable creatures they were.
In little while Major Ashford had
developed a cure. When the cause of
the disease is known the greater part
of the task is usually accomplished.
With a dosage of thymol the parasites
were banished from their victims.
These worms live in the sand and en-
ter the body through the bottoms of
bare feet. Methods of keeping them
out were devised.
DIR. Charles Waddell Styles, of the
Public Health Service, was at the
same time working along similar lines
among the poor whites of the
South. There he found the hookworm
also. 1t has since been found the
world around and millions of people
in the tropics who had previously been
thought to be merely lazy and good
for-nothing are being treated, cured
of a disease and converted into useful
men and women 1t is another accom-
plishment for the permanent good of
humanity
When the present war got we'll un-
der way in Europe one of the most
pathetic calls was from Serbia, where
a whole people was being attacked by
typhus fever. Had the war come Ave
Years earlier typhus fever would have
been a mystery, and no man would
have known the method of its trans
mission nor how it might be fought.
Get Secrets of Typhus
Health Service had gone to Mexico
City five years ago and there wrested
from the slums of that unfortunate
capital the secrets of typhus, They
were DR.. ]. F. Anderson and DR.. Jo-
| seph Goldberger, the latter of whom
came down with the disease, but re-
covered. They proved that the dis.
ease was carried by body insect and
| in no other way.
| Typhus fever had been variously
known as army fever, prison fever
ship fever and latterly as Brilps dis
ease. 1t had baffled the scientists
Through the centuries. But here was
it's riddle solved and so were army sur
geons able to stamp it out in Serbia.
These are but the high lights OF
the accomplishments that have come
about in that era of sanitation that
has followed the Spanish American
war. Each of the riddles solved has
| been one that has baffed mankind
through the ages and has always taken
its toll of human life. Nearly all OF
them came about because the Spanish
American war thrust American armies
into the tropics and with them the
military surgeon whose business it
was to keep those armies healthy.
1t is infinitely to the credit of the
/ American army surgeon that he solved
in a decade most of the great puzzles
| that had det1ed similar organizations
of other nations which had been ir
the tropics for decades and even cen.
, turtles.
In but one of the important dis
eases has the United States yielded
the palm to other nations. Military
surgeons of England and France ini-
tiated the theory that malaria was
transmitted by a mosquito, a work
which American surgeons have helped
WI 40 inn q
ant place in the accomplishments OF
tho era of sanitation