HOW THE ANSWER CAME
In Fiji we started out directly for cure and prevention, an active campaign. Chris Kendrick was still with me, my gem of the first water; Malakai was a newly discovered diamond.
On my first tour I saw filthy sanitary arrangements, or none at all. By education we tried to induce the natives and oriental transplant to use ordinary cesspit latrines; our efforts met with more success after the discovery of a new internal remedy had rewarded us with public approval and made the Fijians health-conscious. From then on the pathway was cleared for all our efforts. Dr. Heiser, when he visited us in 1928, introduced the bored-hole latrine, which was the Foundation’s enthusiasm at that time. It was a twenty-five-foot hole dug with an eighteen-inch auger, which was a practical benefit to the East Indian in Fiji; but, for the native, the deep pit, covered with a polished concrete slab—which we were by then making and distributing by thousands—was by far the better sanitation.
Dr. Heiser came out again in 1934. In his An American Doctor’s Odyssey he was kind enough to report those two visits at some length. On his latter trip we made the surveys together and looked over results of our bored-hole work. I have a pleasant memory of our expeditions; how he belied his sixty-third birthday when his long legs walked me lame in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. We argued like a pair of plumbers on a holiday; subject, Bored Latrine versus Cesspit. I contended that the deep auger-hole was all right for the delicately built Indian, but, even then, in rocky or sandy soil it was no good at all. And for Fijians it wouldn’t work. Why? In a land where the natives use palm leaves, breadfruit leaves, stones, coconut husks and hanks of wild grass for toilet purposes, a narrow tube in the ground gets stopped up in less time than it takes to bore it. Then the chap takes to the bush, as of old. It has nothing to do with science, it’s just practical mechanics, plus tradition. Our debate had this effect at least; we later modified the bored-hole latrine with a much larger hole, but retained the concrete slab, which was admired by barefoot natives for its reliable cleanliness.
******
But in 1922, as a newcomer in Fiji and with only such authority as I could get by talking myself into it, this broken jigsaw puzzle looked to me like something no mere human hands could put together. I was a health officer on a rather large scale with nothing so much as a dog license to show for it. It was pretty discouraging, at first. I was like a fireman with a leaky hose, trying to stop a blaze at one end of a building while an incendiary poured gasoline on the other. The government health authorities had a right to mourn over the Foundation’s recent attempt to kill the all-pervading parasite. Everywhere I went I saw how little the good work had accomplished. Chris Kendrick would come back from treatments in outlying districts and smile ruefully. “They’re quite a mess out there.” Like all of us, he was losing faith in chenopodium; and Chris Kendrick’s faith would stand a good deal of punishment.
Nevertheless, I was working vigorously to educate the natives in the nature of various parasites and the virtue of treatment. And I was pumping up British enthusiasm with every publicity device I could lay my hands on. As I tooted the Horn of Health they began to look upon me as Barnum’s little brother with a rich strain of Rockefeller in me somewhere.
One of my less dignified efforts along the line of health-advertising was a window display I devised for Pop Swann’s drugstore, prominent on Suva’s main street. Pop was a stanch friend of medical progress. So it didn’t take long to convince him that an attractive display of intestinal parasites would help both his business and mine. Most of his customers were Fijians and East Indians, so nothing could be more logical. “Anything in the world to push things along, my boy,” said enthusiastic Pop. Between us we set up a charming arrangement in the two windows on either side of his street door, where all who passed could wonder and admire: worms of every variety in the big gallon bottles they call “Winchesters.” Tapeworms of infinite length slithered around in alcohol; families of Necator americanus swam cozily beside a jugful of oriental Ankylostoma; there was a large bottle devoted to the fat roundworms, nearly a foot long, and to the screw-headed whipworms, and to other, less notorious wrigglers. Pop Swann rubbed his hands as we stood outside gloating over our work in the two windows that fledged his main door. “Doc,” chuckled Pop, “that ought to draw customers, if anything will!”
Then a very busy week, uphill and down dale, organizing the campaign and pushing it along. One day, going by Pop Swann’s, my way was blockaded by a semicircle of Indians and Fijians, standing at a respectful distance from the great exhibition. Out of the door burst Pop, hair on end. “Doc,” he shouted, “for the love of God take those things out of my windows. The natives are so scared they won’t pass in between those worms. You’re ruining my trade!”
So I dewormed the window and time marched on. But it wasn’t marching well for me, or in the right direction.