Today, the control of this terrible scourge is in our
hands, and, as I shall tell you in a few minutes, largely because of
this control, the Panama Canal is being built. No disease illustrates
better the progressive evolution of scientific medicine. It is one of
the oldest of known diseases. The Greeks and Graeco-Romans knew it well.
It seems highly probable, as brought out by the studies of W.H.S. Jones
of Cambridge, that, in part at least, the physical degeneration in
Greece and Rome may have been due to the great increase of this disease.
Its clinical manifestations were well known and admirably described by
the older writers. In the seventeenth century, as I have already told
you, the remarkable discovery was made that the bark of the cinchona
tree was a specific. Between the date of the Countess's recovery in Lima
and the year 1880 a colossal literature on the disease had accumulated.
Literally thousands of workers had studied the various aspects of its
many problems; the literature of this country, particularly of the
Southern States, in the first half of the last century may be said to
be predominantly malarial. Ordinary observation carried on for long
centuries had done as much as was possible.
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