worm to be a new species, which he first named Uncinaria Americana and later re-christened Necator Americanus.

Successive investigations were soon followed by his announcement that the Southern States of the Union were delivered over to a worm whose characteristic was innervation of its host. Here, said Dr. Stiles, quickly seconded by the Northern press, lay the explanation of the laziness of the "poor white trash" of the Southern proletariat. Resultant publicity attracted the attention of John D. Rockefeller, Christian philanthropist and capital business man, who offered a million, more or less, to rid the South of its hookworm. Hence, the famous Rockefeller Foundation, definitely established in 1909.

Meanwhile, the young medical officer in Porto Rico was again at his station in Ponce, and there-far from great newspapers, philanthropists, and an applauding world, but in the midst of a densely-populated, poverty-stricken tropical island where two of every three inhabitants were afflicted with uncinariasis-he continued a work whose chief reward was to be, then and now, the approval of his conscience, the recognition of his peers in tropical medicine (there are not so many of these, now that he has attained his eminence), and the gratitude of thousands of penniless jibaros whose lives he saved.

Dr. Ashford, with the aid of Dr. Walter W. King, made a study of one hundred moribund cases of uncinariasis in Porto Rico as a scientific record. Eleven per cent. of them died, but eighty-nine per cent. became again useful members of society. Publication of the results of his work, with its obvious implication, and an incisive editorial in American Medicine by Gould, induced action from the Porto Rican Legislature, which in 1904 passed a bill authorizing the expenditure of $5,000 for "the study and treatment of anæmia in Porto Rico". Dr. Ashford was put in charge of the work. Over 5,000 anæmics (at a cost of less than one dollar per case) were clinically cured. This ocular demonstration that the anæmia of Porto Rico was curable, and a careful published study of the disease uncinariasis in this hemisphere (for Lieutenant Ashford, gifted in spite of his youth with Scottish astuteness as well as Scottish persistence, had learned now to set down his findings immediately in black and white), shocked both

the people of the United States and the people of Porto Rico into recognition of an incontrovertible fact. In Porto Rico, for seven years thereafter, the Insular Legislature voted larger and larger appropriations to out-general the little monster draining its life blood. By the time the Rockefeller Foundation began to function, Porto Rico had already presented to the world a record of 317,000 people successfully treated, and had accordingly completed the first successful campaign against the disease in the Western Hemisphere, and-more notable still-the first field attack in history on this devastating agricultural scourge.

In the last days of this campaign, Mr. Rockefeller sent his prospective director of the nascent Foundation, Dr. Wickliffe Rose, to Porto Rico to study the methods there in practice; and on Dr. Rose's return north, a similar campaign was instituted, at first in our Southern States and eventually all over the tropical and sub-tropical world.

The next few years of Dr. Ashford's service-none of them without importance, but, for that very reason, all together making demands too great upon limited magazine space-must be passed over rapidly. When the cyclone of 1908 destroyed Purvis, killing 1,500 persons, the State of Mississippi for the first time since the Civil War sought Federal aid. Dr. Ashford-a Major then-was sent with his company of Medical Department soldiers to set up a field hospital and direct relief work. "The excellent impression made by the official relief operations upon the residents of the district," says the Army report (the Southern press was less reserved in its heartfelt gratitude), "is due in great measure to the splendid work, the courteous conduct, and the fine tact of the officers of the Medical Department assigned to this duty, Major Bailey K. Ashford and Captain H. H. Bailey." In 1910, as United States delegate to Belgium, to the Second Congress of Industrial Hygiene and to the Congress of Alimentary Hygiene, Dr. Ashford took part in a debate on miner's anæmia, of which disease Germany claimed to have treated more cases than any other nation. "Miner's anæmia" is of course hookworm disease; and through the United States delegate, announcement was made for the first time in Europe that 250,000 persons had up to that time been treated in America, all in Porto

Rico; thus securing for the United States first place in the consideration of measures to be adopted in combating the scourge. In 1916, the Rockefeller Foundation in Brazil invited Dr. Ashford to open in that country a field dispensary, one which would demonstrate methods of treating, near their place of work, laborers sick of hookworm disease. Dr. Ashford's immediate practical response revealed both the scientist and the military man. Some portable frame houses with canvas walls were ordered by cable from Wisconsin, and a $25,000 equipment, comprising all that experience in Porto Rico had shown to be necessary, from New York, to be ready for shipment on the vessel on which Dr. Ashford was to sail with Dr. Richard Pearce and Dr. John Ferrell, each of whom had a mission distinct from the others. The work in Brazil was carried on for a period of three weeks in a remote treeless plateau of Minas Geraes, at Capella Nova, a friendly picturesque town chiefly noted as the home of American trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness-though in the American variant sufferers do not sleep but go mad. Two days after the arrival of Dr. Ashford and his equipment in the uplands-and their simultaneous arrival, in carnival time, in Brazil, would merit each an exclamatory explanatory paragraph, had we not already stated that he is a physician, an army officer, and mostly Scottish-the plant was set up, ready for patients, out on a table-land shaggy with bearded Brazilian grass. Though there was uncinariasis in plenty throughout the State of Minas Geraes, the population was sparse: twenty to the square mile. Even in Porto Rico, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with 300 to the square mile, it required at least a month to induce two hundred shy, ignorant and suspicious peons to take thymol in a community where it was being administered for the first time. But Brazilians proved to be either more desperate or more trusting. In three weeks the hospital treated over 1,400 patients who had come incredible distances to be cured. The President of Minas Geraes himself (every Brazilian State has a President) visited the clinic and was so impressed by the work being done that he had thirty similar clinics permanently established through the State.

In 1911, Georgetown University, from which Dr. Ashford had

graduated in medicine in 1896, conferred the degree of Doctor in Science "upon her well-beloved son, Bailey Kelly Ashford . for by keenness of intellect and unflagging patience and labor he has lately devised an efficacious remedy for that most disastrous plague which has hitherto exacted a lamentable toll of life among certain peoples, notably in the West Indies. Wherefore in the judgment of all good and learned men, he is eminently deserving of a high place among the real benefactors of the human race; his knowledge and skill in medicine have, moreover, brought additional lustre to the name of his honored father; and finally he has served his country faithfully and well."

And upon the lofty note struck by these words, translated from the Latin of the diploma, we may well begin a brief account of Dr. Ashford's work in France; for during the World War, he was to make a contribution to military science scarcely less epochal than his work in tropical medicine.

No other officer of the American troops in France was more active in service than Dr. Ashford, often in the presence of the enemy; none discharged more magnificently a heavy burden of responsibility involving problems to be solved only by courage, prudence, and the insight and exact knowledge of a great scientist. Dr. Ashford was made the Division Surgeon of the First Division of the A. E. F., and crossed the Atlantic on the first convoy for France. He was, indeed, the second man of the A. E. F. to set foot on French soil. From Gondrecourt, where he was sent to train with the French Chasseurs, he made visits to the French front. Among the drastic reforms and additions to equipment recommended-and obtained-by him were comfortable beds with steel springs for our wounded at the front. His promotion to a colonelcy automatically eliminated him from the First Division after its first engagement, and General Pershing placed him in charge of the School for the Battle-Training of Medical Officers of the A. E. F. The "School" was only a name on paper. Tangibly and objectively there was no School. Part of Colonel Ashford's task was to create it.

He went to Langres and drew up his plans. These specified: (1) That he be permitted to select five associates of his acquaintance from among the medical officers of the army. He

chose men like himself, able, energetic, and loyal; (2) That the half of a girls' school at Langres be evacuated to accommodate the classrooms, administrative offices, etc., of the Medical School; (3) That he might select as students bright men from among the eighty-odd medical officers of each Division on its arrival in France from the States; and (4) That he, with his student officers, be given authority to visit British, French, and American fronts in battle periods.

The object of this strenuous training was to put the medical officers for one week in the trench or on the fighting line in an advance; for a second week in the division field hospitals; for a third, in the evacuation hospitals; and for a fourth, in the base hospitals and special hospitals in the rear, including Paris.

Thus the course of training for our medical officers with the A. E. F.-a course originated and developed by Dr. Ashford, and carried out successfully under his direction-consisted of four weeks in the theatre of operations after a preliminary course at Langres of two weeks. Dr. Ashford carried through ten such courses, was at the front during every one of our major engagements, witnessed also those of the British and the French, and in so doing gave his successive sets of students, the incoming civilian medical officers, a unique opportunity to adapt their scientific knowledge to the actual conditions of war on a contemporary battlefield.

Another unique feature of Dr. Ashford's method as Commander of the Langres Sanitary School for the Training of Army Officers was the establishment of his "printing squadron". He specified that twenty men of the medical department should, upon his return after each visit to the front, mimeograph his notes on lectures, talks and battles. These mimeographed notes were distributed as special bulletins throughout the A. E. F., in order to unify our medical service. Comprising altogether some two thousand pages, they give a history of medical, surgical, and sanitary practice on the battle-field absolutely unparalleled in method and in scope.

"As director of the Army Sanitary School," says the laconic but inspiring official citation for the Distinguished Service Medal awarded to Dr. Ashford in 1922, "by his individual energy, abil