Page:Messages of the President of the United States on the Relations of the United States to Spain (1898).djvu/71

 42 and were at once spreading it among the needy sick. I also sent a quantity to the archbishop, and begged him to accept and use it in such a way as in his judgment he thought best.

The physicians of the city quickly joined, and in less than twenty-four hours the quinine was in every part of the city doing its work.

I also shipped portions to Baracoa on the north coast, to Guanatanamo and Manzanillo on the south coast, to the interior towns of Holguin, Canez, San Luis, Dos Caminos, Cristo, Moron, Dos Bocas, San Vicente, Noniato, and Cuabitas, as also to the towns at Daigueri and Juragua, belonging to two large American iron-mining companies.

A fair quantity was sent to the eleemosynary institutions of this city and other places, so that within a week the whole hundred thousand pills were doing duty and just as they were gone another batch arrived.

The governor, seeing the good work being done, sent me a polite note, saying he had appointed two gentlemen to assist me and that he himself was personally at my service. I then appointed two gentlemen, Dr. Arze and Mr. Octaviano Duany, to act in conjunction with the governor's committee.

These gentlemen will under my direction look after the business matters and will take charge of the distribution of food.

The ladies will go from house to house and issue tickets according to their best judgment, and at certain times these orders will be filled under the direction of the gentlemen committee.

With the free use of quinine the death rate of the city fell 20 per cent the first week.

The quinine and other medicines sent have proved to be so potent and certain in their action, that the work of American chemists has received a decided boom and by all parties the action has been pronounced marvelous.

The doctors have heretofore found that in order to break a fever they had to prescribe from 60 to 100 grains of quinine each day. One-fifth of that amount of American quinine does the work better.

Very respectfully,

United States Consul.

Santiago de Cuba, February 16, 1898.

Wounded Spanish soldiers, about 200 in number, have been brought to the hospital of this city within the last three days. A surgeon who has dressed the wounds of a Spanish captain tells the story this morning as follows:

The captain admitted a loss of 300 in killed and wounded on the Spanish side, and says they have no knowledge of the loss inflicted on the insurgents.