prevailed in the rural sections of the Southern States.  Yet he could not mention this without exciting uproarious laughter—­even in the presence of scientific men.  Several years previously Dr. Stiles had discovered that a hitherto unclassified species of a parasite popularly known as the hookworm prevailed to an astonishing extent in all the Southern States.  The pathological effects of this creature had long been known; it localized in the intestines, there secreted a poison that destroyed the red blood corpuscles, and reduced its victims to a deplorable state of anaemia, making them constantly ill, listless, mentally dull—­in every sense of the word useless units of society.  The encouraging part of this discovery was that the patients could quickly be cured and the hookworm eradicated by a few simple improvements in sanitation.  Dr. Stiles had long been advocating such a campaign as an indispensable preliminary to improving Southern life.  But the humorous aspect of the hookworm always interfered with his cause; the microbe of laziness had at last been found!

It was not until Dr. Stiles, in the course of this Southern trip, cornered Page in a Pullman car, that he finally found an attentive listener.  Page, of course, had his preliminary laugh, but then the hookworm began to work on his imagination.  He quickly discovered that Dr. Stiles was no fool; and before the expedition was finished, he had become a convert and, like most converts, an extremely zealous one.  The hookworm now filled his thoughts as completely as it did those of his friend; he studied it, he talked about it; and characteristically he set to work to see what could be done.  How much Southern history did the thing explain?  Was it not forces like this, and not statesmen and generals, that really controlled the destinies of mankind?  Page’s North Carolina country people had for generations been denounced as “crackers,” and as “hill-billies,” but here was the discovery that the great mass of them were ill—­as ill as the tuberculosis patients in the Adirondacks.  Free these masses from the enervating parasite that consumed all their energies—­for Dr. Stiles had discovered that the disease afflicted the great majority of the rural classes—­and a new generation would result.  Naturally the cause strongly touched Page’s sympathies.  He laid the case before the ever sympathetic Dr. Buttrick, but here again progress was slow.  By hard hammering, however, he half converted Dr. Buttrick, who, in turn, took the case of the hookworm to his old associate, Dr. Frederick T. Gates.  What Page was determined to obtain was a million dollars or so from Mr. John D. Rockefeller, for the purpose of engaging in deadly warfare upon this pest.  This was the proper way to produce results:  first persuade Dr. Buttrick, then induce him to persuade Dr. Gates, who, if convinced, had ready access to the great treasure house.  But Dr. Gates also began to smile; even the combined eloquence of Page and Dr. Buttrick could not move him.  So the reform marked time until one day Dr. Buttrick, Dr. Gates, and Dr. Simon Flexner, the Director of the Rockefeller institute, happened to be fellow travellers—­again on a Pullman car.