The weekly soliphone., 1915-02-19
DIR. ROBINSON WRITES
ABOUT THE HOOKWORM
Former Greene Countian Now Mem.
ber Tennessee State Board
of Health.

w. P. Robinson, formerly of this
county, but now located at Savan-
nah, Tenn:
Five years ago Jno. D. Rockefeller
made an appropriation of 81, 900, 200
to finance the campaign against hook
worm disease in the south and agreed
to make other appropriations from
time to time as needed to carry on
the work for a period of five years.
This five year period expired Jan. l,
1915, and the Rockefeller sanitary
commission disbanded.
Since the organization of the
Rockefeller sanitary commission,
there has been another commission
organized known as the internation-
al health commission. The interna-
tional health commission has a wider
field of activity than the sanitary
commission had. The sanitary COM
mission was dealing with hookworn
disease alone, while the internation-
al health commission proposes to
handle anything of philanthropic ma
ture that the commissioners in New
York city see fit to take hold of.
The Rockefeller foundation has an
endowment of 100000 made by
Mr.. Rockefeller. The interest on this
$1O0,000,000 is all that is to be used
to finance the international health
commission, feed starving Belgians,
etc. The foundation is a permanent
organization and has a charter in
New York state. The international
health commission is not necessarily
permanent. 1t may or may not be
permanent. 1t has no charter, but
is really only branch, you may say,
of the foundation. In other words,
the international health commission
does things and the foundation pays
for it. Five years from now there
may be no international health COM
mission. Another commission may
be organized to do the work with
the foundation paying its bills.
Eleven southern states have been
waging a campaign against hook
worm disease. Three of these states
have had enough work done, the
commissioners of the foundation
think, to justify their disseminating
the campaign Jan. l this year. Five
of these states will work until March
/ this year and the other three states
will work on until July l, 1915, the
work being done the same way and
paid for the same way as heretofore,
except now it is done by the interna-
tional health commission and not by
the sanitary commission.
The campaign against hookworm
disease has been an educational agen-
cy. 1t has taught the people that
there is such a thing as hookworms.
lent in the south. 1t has awakened
the medical profession to the fact
that hookworm disease is very prev
alent in the south, and today there
are thousands of southern physicians
treating people for this trouble who
would have been treating these cases
for stomach trouble, heart trouble,
and various other ailments had this
campaign never been made.
In many cases it has enabled the
physicians to get their patients to
submit to treatment when this would
have been impossible had there not
been dispensary work done in the
community, to demonstrate to the
people that hookWorms were not as
fictitious as once thought to be.
The doctors engaged in this work
have had to combat a great deal of
ignorance and superstition. They
have been able to handle this better
than any local physician could pos
sibly have done because this was
what they were paid to do and they
did not have to fear losing custom
err by suggesting to him that he
might have hookworms.
They have found those who had
never given any study to the subject
but yet spoke as one of authority
and stated that there was no such
Cor "sich", as they would usually
say) thing as hookworm, just
as those are found who say there is
no Cod. These same fellows in many
cases, who later changed their minds
and had their families examined, had
some six or eight children all infected
with these parasites.
AS stated above this has been an