AMBASSADORS IN WHITE: The Story of American Tropical Medicine

This is a stirring and a horrifying account of tropical medicine, of unlimited death and disease, of limited men and medicines, -- one of the few books that has a genuine claim to the De Kruif market. Dynamic in its material, persuasive in its arguments for hospitals, doctors and money for the sick countries of Latin America, where society estimates 50 million afflicted. Here are the stories -- many of them unknown -- of the men who have fought lonanded against tropical disease, -- Gorgas, who struggled to sanitize the Canal Zone, Carlos Finlay, the Cuban, who for 18 years, disbelieved and unrecognized, experimented with yellow fever and implicated the mosquito as its source and carrier; Walter Reed, who proved Finlay's work; Deeks, an inquisitive Canadian who pioneered against malnutrition; Noguchi, Japanese bacteriologist. Smallpox, syphillis, T B, malaria, yaws, fevers and dysenteries, widespread agents of death which, were there men and money, in eight cases out of ten, could be controlled and eradicated. Today with intercommunication and trade with Latin America imperative to inter continental solidarity, our own health is jeopardized by our very indifference to the less scientifically advanced Americas. Dramatic reading. Some few parts have appeared in periodicals (Harper's and Travel).