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Show I -1 CIRCLING THE CARIBBEAN SEA WITH AMERICAN HOSPITALS , , - Tho American tropics are beincr brought into God's connt?ry. The mighty works accomplished for sanitation sani-tation and pood health by the United States in the Canal Zone and at Ila-0 Ila-0 ana during the American occupa tion have been duplicated in a vast fringe of country circling the Caribbean Carib-bean sea. The people of the Caribbean lands an not only making wide use of an- tomobiles, street cars, concrete construction, con-struction, city lighting, and public I water supply systems but the problems prob-lems of sanitation and hyg-iene are I occupying their serious a,.tontion. The largest, most thoroughly organized or-ganized and far-reaching work for public health and sanitation ever undertaken un-dertaken by an Amenc?-: company in the tropics has been successfully carried on by the United Fruit Com-1 pany. It is doubtful if any similar work of equal magnitude has ever j been successfully attempted by a private concern. Few governments nave even equalled or approximated it. We ha e nothing like this work in the Philippines. The company has i almost fringed the Caribbean sea ' with district hospitals, dispensaries, and health camps. It has drained vast areas of swampy land. It has given hundreds of communities pure water to drink. The work was undertaker un-dertaker at an expenditure of millions. mil-lions. Several hundred thousand dollars dol-lars are required annually for its maintenance. In all the company's hospitals there are fine physicians, many of them bearing post-graduate honors won at American and European universities. uni-versities. The cumulative experience of the hospital work some of them were started before our government began its sanitation in tho Canal Zone makes the records of great value. Often visiting physicians come for study and special research. There are, too, American women nurses who are doing a work as bie as that done on the lattlefields or Europe. Last year the medical divisions of the company treated 116,000 patients. pa-tients. This does not mean that there is a tremendous amount of illness ill-ness lurking around the Caribbean There isn't. General William C. Gorgas, after a four months' trip, said: "I am convinced that neither plaguo nor yellow fever exist anywhere any-where on the litem 1 coast of the Caribbean." But for the first time in the history of many of these regions thousands of persons are finding a I hospital they can go to when they arc llL In its medical divisions in Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, and Cuba, the United Fruit Company has 14 hospitals and 3-1 dispensaries or medical stations. Many of the pntients have never , seen sheets and pillow cases before But they soon learn to like them and the daily bath, too. Ninety-five per cent of the native patients at tho company's hospital in Santa Marta are found to have hook worms. Of this ailment they are Quickly cured. The broad and enlightened policy of this company cannot alone be measured in dollars and cents. It has brought to the company a prestige pres-tige in the American tropics that money could not buy and to the many American doctors, nurses and sanitation engineers who have successfully suc-cessfully fought tho good fight it has brought a life-long satisfaction. |