“That’s fine, Doctor,” I said, “perfectly fine.”
Papua? Where was Papua? Vainly I fished for scraps of geography and pulled up impressions of palmy islands where black warriors asked guests how they liked their missionary, rare or well done.
Dr. Heiser sat behind a modest desk in one of the smallest rooms at 61 Broadway, delivering a sort of curtain speech to an act that had taken longer than a Chinese play, an act which had played through the war summer of 1918. I had finally found a successor and resigned my superintendency of the United Fruit Company’s hospital in Costa Rica; I was in New York to offer my services. But Uncle Sam wasn’t looking for medical officers with weak eyes.
Now Dr. Heiser’s kindly voice was praising and instructing one of the family, for at last I had joined up with the Foundation. There he was, kneeing his desk, telling me nothing about Papua, saying that my Costa Rican and Mexican experience had particularly fitted me for work with the International Health Board, not mentioning that war had taken away many of their physicians. He dwelt on the preparatory three months’ hookworm training I had already taken, under the Foundation’s auspices, among the hillbillies of Mississippi ... kept me moving, didn’t it, canvassing from door to door?... Lambert, you can work a lot faster down in the South Pacific, where you’ll lecture and treat in batches of from fifty to five hundred.... You’ll have to cover a lot of ground down there.... Take along plenty of khaki, and no evening clothes.... Get your family ready and start day after tomorrow.
“And on your way to Papua, Lambert, you’d better report to Waite, who’s in charge of our work in Australia. There’s quite a hookworm campaign going on in North Queensland. Good place to brush up on what you’ll need in Papua. You’ll find the Australians good fellows, like our Westerners, rough and generous and tolerant—they haven’t had to jam together in big cities and get small-minded.”
During our argumentative stage, I had told Dr. Heiser about a mining syndicate’s offer to take me down to Peru. I didn’t bring that up again, or mention General Gorgas’ half-promise to forgive my blinky eyes and commission me in the venereal section of the Medical Corps.
When I left that morning I was under the spell of the Heiser charm; a charm that has sent armies of scientific men, great and small, to follow jungle trails all over this planet, and work until they drop. In later years I walked with him along some of those trails, and my admiration for him increased every step of the way. There is a godlike something about Heiser that will never let him fall from the pedestal he deserves. Grant him clay toes if you wish, he is still a colossus who has bestridden the field of public health for twenty years—and been the target of much professional jealousy. In 1937 when I was at a League Conference in Java I heard an envious Yankee voice say, “Yes, I’ve read his American Doctor’s Odyssey, and I wonder why he didn’t call it Alone in the Orient.” Which gave me the luxury of a reply: “Did you watch him inaugurate public health work in the Philippines? Alone in the Orient describes it rather well.”
******
I found an atlas and looked up Papua. Rather dully I was informed that Papua lay on the southeastern edge of New Guinea, the second largest island in the world—the Australian Continent’s hottest neighbor, no doubt, since its northern shoulder jogged the equator. The extremely savage names of its numerous tribes, the aimless fertility of its soil, its wealth of gold, copper and pearls, struck only dull fire on my imagination. I was going to a place called Papua, not to flirt with rubber-bellied brunettes in grass skirts, but to search sensibly for yaws, malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis and intestinal parasites. And to rout out the hookworm as tamely as I had poked him up in polluted Mississippi.
That was 1918, when a trip to Paris and back was something to talk about. The armistice hadn’t yet sent back a million doughboys with a smattering of obscene French. The world cruise hadn’t risen as a major industry. Today any debutante who has sauntered around the globe can tell you more about Fiji fire-walking and Arabian sword-swallowers than anybody but a professional explorer knew then.