Page:Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, volume 1.djvu/33

Rh pathologist. The multiplication of workers is extraordinary, and doubtless is accounted for by the establishment of the several tropical schools in Great Britain and else-where; not least by the sympathy and active encouragement that research in tropical pathology has received at the hands of the British Government. Time was when with justice we could reproach our rulers for indifference in this matter. Nowadays quite a different feeling obtains in official circles, and instead of being repressed and cold-shouldered the investigator in tropical pathology is encouraged in every possible way by the British Government and its officers. Other Governments, too, have ceased to be indifferent; some are actively sympathetic.

The interest which the British Government has shown in sleeping sickness promises well for our object. The fact that His Majesty's Government has called a Conference of the Foreign Powers to discuss this subject from an international point of view shows that we are entering on a new era as regards the Governmental element in the study of tropical disease. It may be that this Sleeping Sickness Conference is but the prelude to similar discussions and international agreements on other important tropical diseases, a matter of more importance than at the first glance it might appear to be.

All over our own tropical possessions laboratories are being established for the special investigation of tropical disease, and for the assistance of the tropical practitioner. These laboratories have just begun to bear fruit, and I have not the slightest doubt that ten years hence we will have important discoveries as well as an enormous accumulation of important data as a result of this enlightened policy.

Our role as a Society in this respect is to try and bring ourselves and our fellow-practitioners abreast of what is being done by this army of workers; so that those of us who have to teach in this country, and those of us who