Jack London

“ I would far prefer being struck with an old-time bullet than with a modern one. It seems that the flight or our long, sharp-nosed, lean, cylindrical, modern bullet is divided into three flights much as the spinning of a top is divided into three spins. When first a top is spun, it jumps and bounces, and bounds about in an erratic way. ”

“ Not content with their own tropical experience, our army surgeons in Vera Cruz are reinforced by such experts from the Marine Hospital Service as G. M. Guiteras and Rudolph von Ezdorf, who have taken charge of the public health of this one-time death hole of Vera Cruz. Killing two birds with one stone, or performing two actions with one movement, is a joy forever and cuts down the overhead. It so happens that the same preventative measures for yellow fever are preventative of malaria. ”

“ In old San Sebastian Hospital lie many of the sick of the city and many of the soldiers that General Maas left behind to fight from the housetops. Many amputations had been performed, and more were being performed. Also, I watched the dressing of the wounds of these poor Federals, and want to register my protest right now that modern war, for the man who gets bullet wounded, is not at all as romantic as old time war. Furthermore, a modern bullet, despite its steel jacket which keeps it from spreading, is a terrifically disruptive thing to have introduced into one's body. ”

“ The United States is large. The United States army is small. It is scattered here and there in army posts. The average citizen knows less of his own army than he knows of north and south polar exploration. As regards the duties and activities of the army surgeons he does not dream of anything beyond the fact that they keep the soldiers well in time of peace, and in war dress wounds and amputate limbs. It would make him sit up and take notice if he could see how complex and multifarious are their activities here in Vera Cruz. To commence with, the army is not their only problem. ”

“ But our army surgeons, wise in tropical diseases from their service in Cuba, Porto Rico, Panama, and the Philippines, are not apprehensive of any grave epidemics in Mexico. They have learned much and rapidly in the last decade and a half, and what they have learned is demonstrable by statistics. Typhoid has ever been a grisly monster to north European and American armies. The Latins and the Asiatics are more immune, this being doubtless due to a rigid selection, operating through many centuries, by which typhoid killed off all that were predisposed to typhoid. ”

“ SOME day in the far future pictures will be pained like that, and our descendants will gaze at them, shake their heads, and laugh at their silly ancestors, just as we to-day gaze at pictures of witch burning, and shake our heads and laugh at the silliness of our very immediate ancestors. Man has climbed far. ”

“ Malaria, also, is a never-absent disease, the death line of it rising rhythmically in the rainy season and falling in the dry season. It, too, by its weakening effect on its victims, is the cause of their contracting other diseases from which they perish, chiefest of which, of course, is tuberculosis. ”

“ You how read this, just draw with a lead pencil a groove two inches wide and three inches deep and you will more fully comprehend what happens to human flesh when a high-powered, wobbling bullet goes tearing through it. ”

“ Smallpox appears to be endemic, rather than epidemic, in Vera Cruz, while tuberculosis, strange to say, collects a greater toll of death than all the more serious diseases added together. Here, in the tierras calientes, or hot lands, where it is so continuously warm that in a room flung wide to the outer air and every vagrant breeze even a sheet over one at night is suffocating, the natives crowd into small, unventilated rooms, weaken their lungs, and fall victims to the White Plague. ”

“ Her great guns, turned upon Vera Cruz for an hour or so, could level the city to the ground as a stream of water would level a house of sand. Magnificent universities have been founded on less than it cost to build and equip her. The money expended on her would save from the White Plague a hundred thousand times more lives than she will ever destroy. ”

“ While all this is a very recent practice, it is a practice wider spread than the army. No scientific hog breeder to-day, whether importing a prize boar from another State, another country, or another farm, is rash enough immediately to turn it in with his herd. It must first undergo its quarantine in a segregated part of the farm. The army surgeons to-day are our foreloopers and pioneers. Not only do they stay at home with the army and make it fit, but they scout ahead of the army so that its fitness my continue in strange lands and places. ”

“ IN ALL the long red history of war, disease has stalked at the heels of armies. In the present generation it bids fair to cease stalking, at least at the heels of armies that are scientifically and modernly handled. I have just been studying the mortality statistics of Vera Cruz for the last sixteen months. There is a peculiar blank space at the head of the column marked "Cerebro-spinal Meningitis." For the first six months of 1913 there were no deaths from meningitis. ”

“ So it is, first, that every soldier up to the present moment landed in Mexico is free of all disease and immune to such diseases as smallpox and typhoid; and, second, that a complete and better body of data has been gathered by our surgeons on diseases in Mexico than has been gathered by the Mexican Government. Our men start uninfected with a fair promise of escaping infection when they tread Mexican soil. Thanks to our discoveries in Cuba some years ago regarding yellow fever, Vera Cruz was cleaned up. ”

“ OVER a thousand skilled men are required to man her—skilled men such as built the Panama Canal and whose skill might well be devoted to making the Mississippi flood proof. Why, down in the bowels of the Arkansas, imbedded in the thickest of armor plate, in the battle control station, an enlisted sailor in the course of describing the new gyro-compass, gave me a lecture that no college professor could have bettered and that no tyro in such matters could have understood. ”

“ THE United States was the first country to inoculate its soldiers and sailors against typhoid, and it is safe to assume, no matter in what other ways its soldiers may lose their lives in Mexico, that none will die from typhoid. The serum is hypodermically injected into the arm in a series of three injections, the intervals between injections being ten days. ”

“ THE hotels and cantinas are crowded with thirsty refugees, soldiers, sailors, and foreign guests, all with a penchant for long, cool drinks. More ice than ordinarily is consumed. The ice plant is a private enterprise. Its output is limited. There is not enough to go around. Hotels and cantinas are cash buyers and pay a premium for ice. Result: (a) the hospitals are skimped in ice; (b) the surgeons make the suggestion and the army takes charge of the ice plant, supplying the hospitals first and letting the hotels and cantinas have what is left. ”

“ As with individuals, so with nations. As long as certain nations go armed in a wild and savage world, just so long must the enlightened nations go armed. The wild and savage world, with its silly man-killing devices, is doomed to pass. ”

“ Thus, whenever men are gathered together in armies, there will be found a far greater proportion of nonimmunes among the north Europeans and Americans than among the Latins and Asiatics. In 1898, in Florida, the United States mobilized 12,000 men for a period of four months. During this time there were 2,600 cases of typhoid and 480 deaths from typhoid. Nor is this the whole story. The soldiers carried the disease with them into Cuba, where many another death resulted from the four months spent in Florida. ”

“ One group toiled at the mixing of chemicals and the making of mechanisms for the purpose of blasting human flesh and bone at longer distances and more efficiently. The other group toiled likewise with chemicals and instruments, seeking out new methods and greater knowledge of the constitution of man in order that they might repair the blasted flesh and bone caused by the devices of the first group. ”

“ NO HEALTHY recruit, having successfully passed the rigid physical examination, is any longer permitted immediately to join the organization to which he is allotted. Healthy recruits have a way of coming down with all sorts of diseases as soon as they change their environment, particularly with measles, mumps, diphtheria, whooping cough, and scarlet fever. ”

“ As long as individuals in a wild country—say the head hunters and cannibals of the Solomon Islands—carry killing weapons, even a philosopher, traveling among them, would be wise to go armed. Neither algebraic nor high ethical arguments are efficacious dissuadements to a kinky headed man-eater with an appetite. ”

“ First, wire screen the yellow fever patient so that no mosquitoes may be infected by him. Second, fumigate the house in which he lies so that no possibly infected mosquitoes therein may infect other humans. Third, and purely a prevision, destroy all mosquitoes in the neighborhood. In the days of the Paris Commune the petroleur flourished. To-day, in the American armies on service in the tropics, the petrolero flourishes. He is the man who spreads oil on all stagnant waters. The larva of the mosquito cannot hatch in running water, nor in fish-inhabited water. ”

“ Every wire screen about a patient, every drop of oil on the surface of standing water, performs the double duty. Further, purely as a prophylactic measure, each soldier will receive a determined number of grains of quinine daily until such time that Vera Cruz has been metamorphosed into a health resort. ”

“ They gather the data on the diseases prevalent in all countries, and their battles and campaigns are planned and mapped and ready to be fought on an instant's notice, no matter to what intersection of latitude and longitude the army may be summoned. ”

“ But until it passes, it would be silliness on the part of the enlightened nations to put aside their weapons. An international police force and an international police court will mark the beginning of the end of war. ”