The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News,Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1909. THE "POOR WHITES."

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 260, 1 November 1909, Page 4

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1909. THE "POOR WHITES."

for the cause that lacks aitistanoe, For the toronsr that needs retittamoe, far the future in the dittano*. And the good that tee can im.

The news that Mr. J. D. Rockefeller has given a million dollars to the Medical Commission which is now engaged in vestigating the terrible "hookworm" disease prevalent in the Southern States, suggests that even American millionaires can sometimes find a way to palliate their greed of gold. For this dreadful malady which has for over a century preyed ceaselessly upon the " poor whites" of tho South has long been regarded as incurable, and its cause lias never been even gueseod at until within the last docado. Throughout Georgia, Florida, Alabama, the Carolinas—everywhere along tho Eastern seaboard from the Potorauv: to the Mississippi—for more than a hundred years thero have lived and suffered and died generation after generation of diseased white men and women constantly decaying in mind and body under tho baneful influence of some so-called " anaemia," and to-day there are probably two million "poor whites" so afflicted, of whom hardly one ever suspects that ho is suffering from the ravages of an internal parasite, and that he ontild be absolutely cured in a few days with a fe-w shillingsworth of cheap drugs. It seems almost incredible that with the facts before their eyes, the American people, and more especially American scientists and medical men, should have so long ignored them; but it is only since the twentieth century opt ned that the investigations of the microscope hare laid bare the truth, and it is to apply scientific methods of treatment to the

disease on a comprehensive scale that some small portion of the tribute poured into tho Standard Oil treasury by the American people is now to be devoted.

The subject is in some respects a repulsive one; but as it concerns the lift and health of many millions of human beings, and more especially as the history of the disea.sp3 illustrates in a vpry striking fashion the marvellous progress of pathological science in recent years, the story of the " hookworm" is -well worth tellin™. "There exists in the Southern States," vsrites a contributor to the "World's Work, , ' "a cl.i-ss of people, which, although dating back many decades, and. springing from pure Anglo-Rayon stock, is uttprly miserable and inefficient. Their leading characteristic is an alleged, deepsnated aversion to work. They are generally devoid of ambition ajid enterprise. Many of them are illiterate, and apparently incapable of acquiring knowledge." Physically they arc, as a Tule, emaciate, but dropsical; they suffer from complicated internal disorders; their complexion is sallow nnd wrinkled, their eyes dead nnd heavy, their expression dull, stupid and melancholy. The children are often undersized and undeveloped, boys and girl 3 of IS to 22 years passing easily for children of 12 to 15. They are all -without exception slow of thought and speech, lethargic, devitalised; and even where their lamentable condition does not induce the monbid habit of "dirteating" constantly associated with their disease, they axe invariably degenerate physically or mentally, and in most eases are quito unfit to bear the responsibilities of life. Such are the "mean whites," the " poor -white trash " of whom the happier Southern negro speaks and sings so scornfully; such they have been for over a hundred years—a. mystery to science, and a misen- to themselves; and it was not till 1902 that, at the Tan-American Congress, Dr. Charles Stiles (Chief of the Zoological Division of tho Public Health Department of the United States) announced that these wretched people were merely suffering from the attacks of a human parasite, and that (hey could be easily and cheaply cured. AVlien first Dr. StUes ma<le public his great discovery, his announcement was gTeeted with scepticism and derision. "The lazy microbe," "the germ of lazinesa" wore stock newspaper jokes far many a month. And nt first sight it certainly seemed ridiculous to assume that all tho incalculable misery and degradation endured by the "poor whites" were simply the work of an organism half an inch long and as thick as p. piece of thread; and when in 1890 Dr. Stiles first suggested that tho "anaemia" of the Southern States

might have a pwasitie origin, he was assured by some of the most eminent doctors in the country that such a solution of the problem, if it were correct, could never have been overlooked so long. However, Dr. Stiles studied carefully the records of similar diseases— for maladies of this kind have been traced to the action of internal parasites >in countries so -widely .separated as Bengal and Algiers, Japan and Abyssinia, Borneo, Madagascar, and Egypt. More particularly the Italian investigations into the terrible outbreak of parasitic anaemia that occurred in North Italy in 1879 among the workers in the St. Gothard tunnel gave him a clue; and by lS!)fl he was in a position to warn his students that if they came across cases of this kind in their own practice they ought to search for parasites of the "hook worm" type. One of Dr. Stiles' pupils, Dr. Ashford, followed this advice, and after many careful experiments identified a new kind of "hook worm" as associated with malarial diseases. At the same time Dr. Smith,

Professor ot Pathology in Pennsylvania University, was working on the same lines, and in May, 1902, he compiled a paper describing the new American "hook worm." But before it was published he received from Dr. Stiles a copy of his own independent investigations, describing in full the "American murderer"— Americanus, —and) tracing in the moet complete and convincing fashion the connection between this terrible parasite and Uncinariosis— the technical title for the malady from which the "poor whites" Buffer.

Perhaps one of the most Temarkable features of the story is the origin of this dreadful disease. It seems to have been imported into the Southern States with the slaves; but, though the negroes are most seriously infected, and by their insanitary method of living spread the disease all around them, they are relatively immune from its worst consequences. If this be true, we may well doubt if any race has ever had to pay a heavier penalty for a national crime than the Americans to-day. For the parasite is everywhere in the Southern States preying upon its unsuspecting victims. What it has already cost the country is not to be estimated in figures; but it is interesting to observe that in South Carolina alone the ravages of the "hookworm" are estimated to mean a dead loss to the State of £6,000.000 a year. Apparently the parasite needs a loose, light soil to develop and flourish in, and all over the sandy hills and "barrens" of the South, -where all children and many adults walk barefoot, and where sanitation in the scientific sense is unknown, there is no defence against its inroads. Finding its way into the system through the poreg of the skin, it speedily reduces it 3 victim to the debilitated condition of mind and body already described. No ordinary language can do justice to the amount of human misery implied by the stunting of physical and mental growth, the sapping away of all vital'ty, the paralysis of will, the degradation of character, and the acute discomfort and pain, to which the countless victims of

"Xecator Amr-ricanus" have Tieen so long subjected. And all this, Science now assures us, can be swept away like an evil dream if appropriate treatment is applied. "By the use, under prescription, of 15 to 75 cents' worth of two of the cheapest and commonest drugs—Epsom salts and thymol—the worst cases can be disposed of absolutely and permanently in from one to ten weeks." This is the message that Dr. Stile 3 has brought to the "poor whites"; and '•Standard Oil" has seldom put its vast accumulations of gold to better purpose than when it decided to assist in solving what the "Atlanta Constitution" has rightly termed "the pre-eminent problem, of the South."