MAN VERSUS INSECT

Evening Star, Issue 18137, 29 November 1922, Page 5

MAN VERSUS INSECT

THE CONQUEST OF TROPICAL DISEASE. The terrible problems of the Near East must renew our Imperial interest in tho problems which may loosely called those of tropical medicine (writes the medical correspondent of the ‘ Observer ). As usual—it may fairly bo said, I think—we were the pioneers, nor can any observers vet unborn claim the place occupied for ever by such men of ours as Munson, Ross, and Bruce. This is as it should be, no other nation on earth having any comparable need for knowledge of this kind in order to protect its own sons and to realise the value of its own possessions. One of the very few boons of the Great War was tho opportunity it afforded for the further study of certain problems, urgent especially in relation to tropical and military hygiene. That opportunity ■was well taken by our workers; and wo need not doubt that such diseases as typhoid fever and ita congeners, the paratyphoid fevers and bacillary dysentery all of which proved to bo _of the most mortal military importance in Gallipoli a efw years ago—will henceforth be kept under rigid control by the method of preventive inoculation which saved hundreds of thousands of lives in our own army alone during the war, and by the over more intensely waged campaign against the insect pests which are largely responsible for conveying the germs m question. As for typhus fever, in tho study of which, our own master student, Air Arthur Baoot, lately lost his life, _ we may bo assured that measures against tho lice which convey the dread infection are now being taken for the protection of our men. What can be and is being done when man really sets himself to the fight against insects m.v best be illustrated from tho Now World, though not yet, _ except in small areas, from South America. That is a field for the future, with limitless possibilities, as Sir John Bland Sutton haa told us on his return from his recent visit to that continent, One may_ venture to suggest that fabulous rewards in terms of money await those business men who, concerned with South America., think it worth while to pay for the bacteriological and entomological research which, when undertaken, rapidly transforms pestilent wildernesses into Eldorados. The incalculable natural wealth of South America merely awaits the men (of other races, I fear, than its present inhabitants) who treat the hostile insects as Roes treated the malarial mosquito at Ismailia and Gorges the yellow-fever mosquito at Panama. On this fascinating theme an admirable article, called ‘Map-changing Medicine,’ is to be found in tho ‘ National Geographic Magazine.’ Tho article in question is of special value in showing how three of tho most devastating and deadly of all diseases are now on. tho way to extinction. Ere long yqilow fever will doubtless be wiped finally off the earth. Hook-worm disease and malaria will follow in due course; that is, just when men think it ..worth while to apply knowledge for their salvation.

The time haa come for us iu India to rival .the hygienic doingo of the United. States in the New World and the Philippines,