“Dr. Flexner,” said Dr. Buttrick—­this for the benefit of his incredulous friend—­“what is the scientific standing of Dr. Charles W. Stiles?”

“Very, very high,” came the immediate response, and at this Dr. Gates pricked up his ears.  Yet the subsequent conversation disclosed that Dr. Flexner was unfamiliar with the Stiles hookworm work.  He, too, smiled at the idea, but, like Page his smile was not one of ridicule.

“If Dr. Stiles believes this,” was his dictum, “it is something to be taken most seriously.”

As Dr. Flexner is probably the leading medical scientist in the United States, his judgment at once lifted the hookworm issue to a new plane.  Dr. Gates ceased laughing and events now moved rapidly.  Mr. Rockefeller gave a million dollars to a sanitary commission for the eradication of the hookworm in the Southern States, and of this Page became a charter member.  In this way an enterprise that is the greatest sanitary and health reform of modern times had its beginnings.  So great was the success of the Hookworm Commission in the South, so many thousands were almost daily restored to health and usefulness, that Mr. Rockefeller extended its work all over the world—­to India, Egypt, China, Australia, to all sections that fall within the now accurately located “hookworm belt.”  Out of it grew the great International Health Commission, also endowed with unlimited millions of Rockefeller money, which is engaged in stamping out disease and promoting medical education in all quarters of the globe.  Dr. Stiles and Page’s associates on the General Education Board attribute the origin of this work to the simple fact that Page, great humourist that he was, could temper his humour with intelligence, and could therefore perceive the point at which a joke ceased to be a joke and actually concealed a truth of the most far-reaching importance to mankind.

[Illustration:  Walter H. Page (1899), from a photograph taken when he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly]

[Illustration:  Dr. Wallace Buttrick, President of the General Education Board]

Page enjoyed the full results of this labour one night in the autumn of 1913, when Dr. Wickliffe Rose, the head of the International Health Board, came to London to discuss the possibility of beginning hookworm work in the British Empire, especially in Egypt and India.  Page, as Ambassador, arranged a dinner at the Marlborough Club, attended by the leading medical scientists of the kingdom and several members of the Cabinet.  Dr. Rose’s description of his work made a deep impression.  He was informed that the British Government was only too ready to cooeperate with the Health Board.  When the discussion was ended the Right Honourable Lewis Harcourt, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, concluded an eloquent address with these words: 

“The time will come when we shall look back on this evening as the beginning of a new era in British colonial administration.”