Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-07-27
BY THOMAS R. HENRY.
.HE regime of the United States
Marines in Haiti has been alter

CHHE regime of the United States
Marines in Haiti has been alter
nateiy lauded and damned.
Il But one side of the story-per- n
haps the most significant of all
for the future of the colored republic
hitherto has been kept out of the news
papers. This concerns the work of n
few officers of the Navy Medical Corps
who in less than a decade raised a dis
ease-stricken nation from the cultural
level of wiZardry to that of modern
science.
When the Marines came the island
was suffering great epidemics of small
pox, typhoid fever, malaria and the
dreaded tropical disease, ''yaws." SAM
tation was in very primitive stage.
There was no scientific medicine. OF
course, there we're a few doctors in
towns like Port au Prince, and they
may have been fairly effective, but they
treated only the few of the upper classes
who could pay their fees, had no in
terest in preventive medicine, and no
immediate patients. The majority of
the populace still patronized the voodoo
doctor, with his muttered charms and
dense ignorance.
Medical men never faced a more
gigantic job than these Navy officers.
All they had to do was make tropical
island sanitary, build hospitals, estab-
lish clinics, treat thousands of patients,
educate an illiterate population in the
elementary rules of hygienic living, build
up system of medical education, COM
bat epidemics, and provide for enough
| native doctors schooled in modern prac-
tees and tradition to carry on after the
occupation ended.
Full Story Just Revealed.
The full story has just been revealed
| in a colume just issued by Lieut. Comdr.
! Robert p. Parsons of the Navy Medical
| Corps, and it is likely to prove one of
the classic chapters in the history of
modern medicine.
The Public Health Service Of Hawaii
was organized in September, 1917, by
| Capt. d. N. Mclean, who was serving
as regimental surgeon of the Marine
| brigade in Haiti. Within a year five
motor trucks and 80 mule carts we're
collecting rubbish in Port au Prince to
| fill in the malarial swamps along the
water front, and similar work was go
ing on in other cities.
Progress was slow. Funds and per-
sonnet were meager," says DR.. Parsons.
THE natives, having no idea what 1t
was all about and being ever suspicious
anu 1cdEluI OI GIfe WHlGe man, OlQ not
show any great willingness to cooper
| ate. 1t was very difficult to find native
girls eligible for training as nurses.
The caste system was very strict. Man
ual work of any sort was found very
degrading"
A nursing school was established, in
charge of Navy nurses. The next step
was increasing the numl5er of medical
officers and dividing the republic into
nine districts, each in charge of med
ical officer. Wherever they went the
Navy doctors accomplished wonders.
Capt. Kent q. Melhorn was placed in
charge of the general hospital at Port
au Prince. A smallpox epidemic was
spreading all over Haiti There never
had been any attempt at wholesale vac
| cination. The scourge had held of for
about generation, so that nobody was
immune. Capt. Melhorn cared for more
than 5000 cases in 1920 in his hospital,
with a mortality of only about 10 per
cent. More than a million persons were
vaccinated during the year the cpl
1 6emic lasted -
| Another of the Navy officers who per-
formed this modern miracle was DIR.
Richard H. Laning, placed in charge of
the Cape Hatien district. Lanings