Preventable Disease and Map-Changing Medicine - October 4, 2022 at 11:46AM

When huge armies were throwing every ounce of their energies against the opposing line, it was constantly realized that the spread of epidemic disease might mean defeat for the affected side. Preventive medicine, in thus being called on to keep every possible man at the front, came into unusual prominence. Foci of contagion existed in various parts of the globe, and the intermingling of peoples, and the crossing and recrossing of seas, invited contagion to spread; but with one exception, the major demons were kept confined to regions in which they commonly prevail in endemic form. With the World War ended, the sanitary organization was largely dismantled; but the urge for conservation of life and energy did not stop and is still going on. From an examination of developments in the world-wide warfare on disease now being waged by various institutions and agencies, Showalter, in an illustrated article in the National Geographic Magazine (September), predicts three announcements of almost unprecedented importance to mankind at no distant date: that (1) yellow fever has been banished from the face of the earth; (2) hookworm disease can be driven from any community which has the will to get rid of it, and (3) malaria can be eradicated from almost any community having enough vital force left to push a thorough yet inexpensive campaign for its extirpation. The widespread incidence of hookworm disease is revealed when it is known that three out of five persons examined in China, three out of four in Siam, and five out of eight in various parts of India are so afflicted. Similar conditions prevail in Brazil, Colombia, Central America, the West Indies and elsewhere. How successful a campaign against this disease may be was shown in Richmond County, Va., where the world-wide fight against hookworm had its inception. About thirteen years ago, when the eradication work began, 82 per cent. of the people of Richmond County had this disease. A survey a few years later showed that only 35 per cent. had the disease; a more recent survey reduced it to 2 per cent., and in 1922 there is apparently not a single person in the county with symptoms of hookworm disease.