Preventable Disease and Map-Changing Medicine

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, thre...
Source: JAMA - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research