WAR ON DISEASE.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 April 1921, Page 10

WAR ON DISEASE.

WORLD-WIDE BATTLE. TRIUMPHS OF SCIENCE. Dr. Victor G. Heiser, director for Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Australasia for the International Health Board of the Rockfeller Foundation, who is making a tour throughout the East, arrived in Sydney recently. A Daily Telegraph reporter who interviewed jhim wrote:— Dr. Hrfstr proved a most genial spirit, and spoke with the thrilling intensity®*©! a scientific devotee on the fight in many lands against mankind’s fell diseases. The International Board carries on the world’s battle against hookworm, yellow fever, malaria, and other tropical and sub-tropical diseases. Its activities extended to tuberculosis in France during the war. Dr. Heiser’s department propagates “control work.” In other words, it applies the ’known results’ of scientific research to vast numbers of people in co-operation with the local governments.

HOPE FOR LEPER. The doctor’s eyes shone ardently as he fluently talked of the strides of science. To the average Australian a cure for leprosy may be an academic thing; to Dr. Heiser it is enough to call forth, a burst of boyish enthusiasm and delight, l and a revel of superlatives. “At JHonolulq, the (other day,” he said, “I examined the lepers undergoing the new Chaulmoogra oil treatment. An ester of the oil is separated out and hypodermically injected. The ester is anti-germicidfil. The treatment looks like curing 25 to 30 per cent, of thos3 taking it. I examined 13Q patients, and all of them were improved. Already they have released eighty lepers as cured.”

“It is one of the most distinctly encouraging things I know about anywhere,” added the doctor. “This terrible disease, which has baffled science for centuries, is now gradually coming under control.”

Father Damien’s name was called up, and Dr. Heiser remarked that it was a shame he was not alive to see leprosy finally conquered, « A netf spirit had come among these unfortunate lepers. Hitherto there was nothing befdre them but solitude and imprisonment without hope. Now they were once more “alive,” and convinced that they were going to get well and return to their fellows.

Dr. Heiser claimed the cure as a triumph for team work and science. The first cure was obtained with the crude oil by the Chief Health Officer of the Philippines. Sir Leon Rogers, a noted British scientist, advanced the inquiry still further, and it was then taken up by Hawaiian scientific men, who made further progress, until Dr. Dean, of the university there, eventually isolated the ester of the oil.

“One of the objects of jny tour on this occasion/* said, “is to see how much. of this Chaulmoogj-a oil there is in the world, and whether additional tree-planting will be required. The pre* sent supplies come from trees in Burma and on the borders of Siam.” It- was hoped, he explained, that the oil would have an effect, on tuberculosis, and experiments were now going forward in Washington. DEALING WITH YELLOW FEVER. Turning the subject from leprosy to yellow fever, Dr. Heiser quietly Announced th£t the Rockfeller Institute “had set itself to eradicate yellow fever from the earth within two or three years.”

The institute proposed to do this byattacking those countries which were the seed-beds of the fever. Already this terrible disease had been stamped out of Ecuador, where it originated, and had raged for a century. Peru and all the Central American countries were now clean. Mexico alone remained. If they succeeded there; t'he western hemisphere would be free. A commission had meanwhile gone to Africa to ascertain whether the true yellow fever existed there or not.

In reply to a question, Dr. Heiser said that the treatment consisted largely in the control of mosquitoes. They had I also discovered the fever organism, and this. enabled them to produce a preventive vaccine as“ well as a curative •crum. Only recently yellow fever got into the great oil-producing districts of i Mexico, and the 20,000 white men who (supervised production there were ready to stampede. The mere announcement that a special steamer was coming with vaccine restored confidence, and the men returned to work. “So you see that the work has a commercial value as well as a purely scientific one,” said the doctor, with a smile. One of the great objects, he proceeded, was to standardise treatment everywhere. The treatment of malaria had already been standardised. Every community, for the cost of 4s per capita for the first year and 2s per capita afterwards, could be provided with complete malaria control. “That is,” he seasonably explained, “you can get rid of all the mosquitoes.” Still verily pungent with stale citronella the interviewer thanked the visitor in anticipation. “Australia and New Zealand are the healthiest countries in the world,” Dr. Heiser conceded, “and as such they are of great interest to science. If we can maintain them that way by various scientific methods those methods will then be proved, and will be applicable to the rest of the world.”

Touching on cancer, the visiting scientist was optimistic. Over 40 per cent, of cancer cases were curable, he said, if brought to the doctor early. If they could educate t'he people to go to the doctor for a diagnosis when an intractable sore or hard lump developed they could do away with a great part of the world’s cancer.

Dr. Heiser was met at the boat by Dr. W. A. Sawyer, who is in charge of Australia and its dependencies for the international Health Board. Dr. Sawyer, with Dr. S. M. Lambert, and an Australian staff, has been chiefly engaged in combating the hookworm disease. which is being gradually conquered, although it previously threatened to become a great national menace in Australia. Dr. Heiser planned t'he present hookworm campaign in 1916, and during his present visit will survey the results of his scientific strategy. -