Beverly banner. [volume] (Beverly, N.J.) 1877-1964, 1925-09-11
WAR ON -
CONTAGON


his environment there is not a
more thrilling chapter than that
which tells of the bitter battles he has
waged for the conquest of contagion,
and of the ground he has won in his
struggle with his relentless and in
Vulnerable, though invisible, foes, the
organisms of disease.
The World war served to demon
.strate that the tyranny of the disease
producing germ can be conquered.
Straining every nerve for victory
the nations that faced the foe from
Bagdad to Bruges had to make sure
that epidemic disease should not at
tack the firing line from the rear
Consequently, halfway and temporiz-
ing methods were taboo and proven
tive medicine had free reign.
The results were amazing. AL
though never before in human his
tory was there such an intermingling
of peoples, such a crossing and re-
crossing of seas such an invitation
to contagion to spread to the ends of
the earth, only one epidemic succeeded
in breaking the barriers erected by
the sanitarians. And, as If to EN-
phasize mans power to master the
major contagious, not one of those
with which the worlds public health
officials were familiar escaped from
the regions where 1t was endemic,
while influenza, which was a stranger,
broke away and swept over the face
of the earth.
1t was natural, therefore, that when
peace came again the lessons of pre-
vention and sanitation learned during
the World war should have driven
themselves home in the minds of those
who think in terms of world welfare.
Taught that epidemic diseases. which
plainly constitute the major menace
to civilization in peace times. can be
mastered, the sanitarians threw them
selves into the fray with redoubled
energy.
Hookworm 10 Conquered.
Casting about in the early days
Tor the best pathogenic foe to attack
in great after-the-war campaign for
international health, many of these
agencies decided to concentrate on
hookworm. For here was human
allment sapping the strength of hun
dreds of millions of people throughout
the frostless belt of the earth
a principal cause, indeed, of their
individual and collective exhaustion.
No other disease is as easily cured.
The demonstration both of its cause
and elimination was amazingly simple:
a dose say, of epson salts, dose of
thymol another dose of salts, fol-
lowed by the elimination of scores and
even hundreds of life-sapping worms.
Reaching as far north as the lati-
tude of Nashville, Tenn, and Osaka,
Japan. and as far south as that of
Valdivia, Chile, and Wellington, New
Zealand, the hookworm zone Of the
earth embraces more than half Its
population.
1t is within this zone that most of
the worlds backward peoples live,
and there is much ground for saying
that perhaps the chief part of their
backwardness is due to the cumulative
effect of the disease-physical, eco
nomic, intellectual, and moral-upon
the race.
Today those southern states com
munities whose health organizations
took up the anti-hookworm war have
the satisfaction of knowing that hook
worm disease has been greatly re-
duced, both in severity and preva-
lence; that the people have been en-
lightened as to its Importance, its
relief, and the means OF it's final con-
troll; that permanent agencies com
united to its elimination have been
rooted in the soil, and that sus-
tanning public sentiment has been
created In the interest of more gen.
erai measures for the better protec-
tion. of public health.
Even more insidious than the hook
worm, and not so dramatically Grad
icable, is the microscopic animal that
causes malaria. In the language OF
the lamented Osler, cholera kills Its
thousands plague in its bad years, its
hundreds of thousands; yellow fever,
hookworm disease, pneumonia and tn
berculosis are all terribly destructive,
some only In the tropics. others in
more temperate regions as well; but
malaria Is today, as 1t were. disease
to which the word pandemic is APP
plicable. In this country and In Eu-
rope it's ravages have lessened enor-
Ynnuo1v d,,ripo xho mast eoufurv huf
in the tropics 1t is everywhere present,
the greatest single foe of the white
man"
Controlling Malaria.
In India alone 100000 people die
annually of malaria and 100,000OO0
more suffer from its attacks. All over
the world, wherever anopheline mos
quitoes dwell, the "ague" is men
ace which Stays its thousands, rem