WAR AGAINST DISEASE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXII, Issue 15557, 6 March 1911, Page 9

WAR AGAINST DISEASE.

(“The Age.”) In the light of Dr Ham’s determined campaign against the “ filthy feet of ftccal-fceding flies,” an article in the October number of the “ Edinburgh Review is of a new interest in an old subject. The writer deals with the inarch of tlie scientific forces that are making “war'against disease.” Really the story as told by this reviewer of the different campaigns against all forms of morbidity is as fascinating as any war correspondent’s description of a great military march to victory. Man has been always engaged, from his very infancy in the scheme of things, in battling against the antagonistic forces of Nature which attacked, his sovereignty. Naturally his first exploits were directed against those ferocious carnivorous enemies most visible to the eye. Nimrod and his “ mighty hunters before the Lord ” were the earliest types of this kind, of warfare. The wild denizens of the forest and the jungle had to bo cleared out oefore he could do anything but,— Eat his meal in fear, and sleep In the affliction of terrible dreams.

But he little knew when he was clearing the way before him from the onslaughts of devastating wolves, prowling maneaters lroin tno thicket, and the roaring Hons of the plains, that there were armies of' ininuto invisible enemies in the shape of micro-organisms sapping his life at a more deadly rate than his ravenous enemies of the jungle had ever done. And yet it was so. The discovery of this has been one of the entrancing triumphs of modern science. The deadly bacillus, because of his mul-ti-million myriads, lias been and still is one of TIIE MOST AWFUL SCOURGES OF UNTAMED NATURE. Tiie article of the Edinburgh reviewer is just a brief history of this most tremendous figjlit. Micro-organisms, lie says, wero discovered as far back as 1659, but it was two centuries later before the relationship of bacteria to disease was brought home to the full apprehension of men. Before that time men wero killed off in their thousands and tens of thousands by invisible enemies. In 1849 the anthrax bacillus was dragged out of his secret hiding-place, and in the course of a few years ms malignity and tho modes of his action were completely made known. When men had had fully revealed to them what this bacillus anthracis had been secretly doing for thousands of years in covering them wth boils and eruptions, and in killing their sheep and cattle, they began to look with closer scrutiny into this microscopic world generally, and there they found wonders undreamt of. In 1579 they ferreted the microbe of leprosy. In 18S0 they detected that of typhoid, tho malign wretch which had lain unseen in our gutters and standing pools, only to spring out on the passerby with mortal ferocity. Then in 1882 the inquirers came upon tho microbo of consumption-—the deadly tubercle. Two years later those of cholera and diphtheria wero found; and then about the same timo the microbe of tetanus. This lust discovery seemed perhaps most wonderful of all. Lockjaw, resulting from a wound, seemed clearly in its diagnosis to bo a spasm of contracting muscles; but when it was found that a tetanic bacillus did all tho mischief by breeding his

MYRIADS OF POISON GERMS in these muscles, it was equivalent almost to a new revelation. In 1892 tho influenza bacillus was found active in his villainy; next, two years later, that of the bubonic plague, that of dysentery in 1900 and of syphilis in 1900. To detect the thief and the assassin is the first step to preventing a robbery and murder. To find the lairs and hidingplaces of these mortal foes of man was the initial stage to their eradication. That has yet to be accomplished. But then came Metchnikoff’s magnificent discovery that if man had armies of infinitesimal enemies in these microorganisms, ho had almost as many friends and allies in the invisible kingdom. The red corpuscles in his blood contain legions of phagocytes, .which patrol man’s body for the sole purpose, ns it would seem, of devouring man’s invaders. Thus, when, in the language of the old school, we were exhorted to keep the bloou pure as a safeguard against bad health, it really meant—- “ Bauble your army of phagocytes, and yon may defy the microbes of tubercle, anthrax, cholera, influenza and tho whole horde of the enemy.” That really is what is meant by tho war against disease. Von mav kill disease in two ways, says the Edinburgh reviewer. One is by keeping up in your blood your full forces of the phagocytes and demolishing the invaders promptly a soon as they enter the blood. This is as if t-licl defenders of a city stood within its walls and with a blast lroru a mitrailleuse swept off everv invading enemy as lie entered. Tho other method comes as a second lino of defence. Tf tho invaders for a time overpower the defending phagocytes, and deposit their toxins in the blood, those poisons may bo rendered incapable of injuring the tissues by the attenuation of the virus through

. SERVM INJECTIONS. It is here that the reviewer joins his forces with Dr Ham m the war of fly extermination. He has marked out lot special destruction tho mosquito, the tsetse fly and the house fly. They are all of the fiend most fiendish.* The greatest triumphs against disease come from the extermination of the fly. Tho mosquito is not in himself a carrier <>! his own natural poison. What Sir Patrick Manson discovered was thattho irritating little plague consumes and digests the microbe preparatory to injecting it with its own poison mwtho blood of matt. All this involved a world of observation. For example, it was discovered that only one group of mosquitoes does this devilish work the anophillinse. They breed in small pools of water, near to lakes ami streams, and proper drainage and cleanliness deprive them of the chance of propagation. As showing the minuteness of observation which has been employed concerning them, it has been discovered that a certain kind of fish feed upon tho larva; of this mosquito. Thus Barbadoes has no mosquitoes because of the small fish that till its streams. In Egypt they have stamped out more than iiaif the malaria cases bv stamping out most of these mosquitoes. Only one kind of mosquito carries tile parasite of yellow fever. All this is very wonderful. Equally sa i:i the knowledge now gained of tsetse fly. which is the cause of the sleeping sickness in Africa. The sleeping sickness is

THE TERROR OF THE CONGO COUNTRY. It has almost depopulated whole districts, and' tho marvel is that the tsetse fly is the marauder responsible for all these ravages on man. Kili the tsetse fl' r and we |,-;M the sleeping sickness. The fly breeds, it seems, in bushes on the banks o* the rivers. Burn off the husoes and we destroy its breeding ground. Science will yet. clear Al-

rica of tho sleeping sickness by clearing it of the tsetse fiv. One of the surest means of exterminating disease from the household and the city is to first exterminate the fly. This seemingly harmless little fiend does not eat and digest microbes as the mosquito does, but he carries them with him in millions and sprinkles thorn all over the food ho touches. It is one of the meet remarkable discoveries of this scientific ago that the house fly, which to the external eye appears quite cleanly, is the bearer of unnumbered parasites. Ho is. indeed, a perfect arsenal of disease. He carries about him and distributes on every side typhoid, cholera, consumption. summer diarrhoea, and half a dozen other spocics of disease germs, as freelv us a rose shcdsTts perfume. The “ Edinburgh Review” article is an excellent one. It ought to be reprinted and distributed broadcast by the Health Department. Wo have got our message Kill the flies ; destroy their breeding grounds; carry the war unceasing and relentless against tno pest, and ve mav hope to very largely free the world of disease.”