Million Patients

A Yankee Doctor And His

Dr. S. M. Lambert's New Book Bites, and Scourges, and Entertains

By R. W. Robson

FOR twenty years, Dr. S. M. Lambert ranged over all the islands of the South Pacific. When he retired, in 1939, he was as well-known, south of the Line, as the Southern Cross or the Burns Philp flag.

He came into the Pacific in 1920, at the behest of the Rockefeller Foundation, to attack hookworm. It appears that, from New Guinea to Tahiti, from the Gilberts right south to Tonga, from 50 to 90 per cent, of natives carried this blood-sucking intestinal parasite, with the result that they were sick in them selves, and. their resistance lowered by anaemia, they were ready victims of introduced diseases and epidemics.

The job was so vast that no Islands Administration, alone, would tackle it.

It was something for which there had to be unified control and co-operative effort.

The evil was recognised—hookworm, literally, was wiping out the native peoples of the South Seas—but nothing much was done about it until Lambert came to the South Seas, with Rockefeller money and prestige.

But, what a job! A million natives had to be examined, from the tractable peoples of Samoa and Tonga to the wild and treacherous headhunters of New Guinea, and the ever-questing cannibals of the New Hebrides. And what an examination! The incidence of hook worm had to be ascertained in each ter ritory and each village, before a cam paign could be planned; and this meant that the doctor’s field team had to obtain and microscopically examine a specimen of excreta from each person in each village.

New to the South Seas, Dr. Lambert was sent first to the raw and primitive land of Papua; and his first work was done in the filthy swamps of the Bamu River delta, and the cruel, inhospitable mountains at the back of the Gulf Divi sion. From there, he went on to New Guinea and other parts of Melanesia, before he had any experience of the softer and pleasanter lands of Polynesia.

Presently he settled down to a lifetime of work, with his headquarters in Suva.

WHAT Dr. Lambert did, and how he did it, is now part of the history of the South Pacific. He not only con quered the hookworm scourge: he applied his medical knowledge, and his genius for organisation, to the problems of com bating disease generally among Pacific Islands communities, and every real administrator in the Pacific became his ardent supporter and friend. It is hard to believe that one man could have accomplished so much even in 20 years.

But, right from the beginning, Lambert worked on the principle that, if he was to do anything with his appalling job, he must educate others, and work through them.

It was in pursuance of that policy that he fought so stubbornly for the proper development of the Suva Medical School.

For the fact that that splendid institu tion now is turning out a yearly batch of NMP’s, and training the Islands com munities to help and save themselves, several good men may claim credit; but the biggest slice of credit goes to the acid-tongued Yankee, Dr. Lambert.

When, in 1939, Dr. Lambert retired and went home, to grow flowers in a quiet American village, he carried the hearty goodwill of every British, Australian and New Zealand administration in the South Pacific. There went with him, also, the certain knowledge that he had done more than any other man to save the South Pacific races from deteriora tion and extinction. Of course, he could have done little without the Rockefeller

Foundation. But the Foundation was singularly lucky in finding Lambert. Few other men, commanding unlimited dol lars, would have accomplished half as much in 20 years.

BUT those who knew Lambert did not expect his complete disappearance, even in retirement. “This man,” they said, “will write a book. And what material he has—2o years up and down the Pacific, informed by an eye that missed little in human relationships, and a cynical brain that loathed conceit and inefficiency.”

They were right. A copy of the book is to hand —“A Yankee Doctor in Para dise—the Man With a Million Patients”, by Dr. S. M. Lambert, published by Little, Brown & Company, of Boston, at $3. It is a big book—4oo pages of smallish type —but I read it in two sittings, and sel dom have I enjoyed a book more.

Perhaps it is because I know the Ter ritories and many of the people concern ing which the doctor writes with such candour and, at times, brutal frankness.

Perhaps it is because the book gives such true pictures of life in the South Seas.

Perhaps it is because this Dr. Lambert can write so well, and can use a pen as one supposes he uses a scalpel—cutting smartly down to the clean, good flesh, sweeping away all the concealing decay and nonsense, demanding the truth, irrespective of whom or what he hurts.

HE treads ruthlessly on official corns, and he tramples on foolish con ceits; yet his long, fascinating story bubbles with good humour. One imagines that, if he had not taken with him into the Pacific that eagerness to laugh, he scarcely could have carried through his job, especially in the early days, when conditions often were revolting, and addle-pated old roosters in high official positions seemed to think that a Yankee doctor’s interest in their natives’ hook worms somehow reflected upon their holy status and the Union Jack. But laugh he did; and, now, as he brings to life in type his long-cherished diaries, we can laugh with him, and right heartily, at times.

This is no book for simpering maidens.

The Yankee doctor was hunting in

human excreta for the signs which would direct his campaign, and he studied the most intimate human relationships be cause he wanted to know the difference between syphilis and yaws, and he had to live frequently with the roughest and toughest lads who sail upon blue water— and to some of whom he owed his life.

One suspects, also, that this medico, himself, was not undistinguished in really tpugh company. So, when he has occa sion to refer to ordure, and copulation, and subjects similarly tabu, he has no

respect for conventional frippery, and uses simple words of one syllable.

If you don’t like it, you need not read his book. But I think you will. Apart from its entertainment value, no library on medicine, or on Pacific affairs between 1920 and 1940. would be complete with out it.

Indignant administrative officials will challenge his merciless, forthright state ments; brasshats everywhere will hate him. But ordinary folk, and underdogs, and Euronesians striving for a decent place in this cock-eyed Caucasian world, will love the book, and cheer Lambert.

Lambert, it seems, likes Australian and NZ people, but cordially dislikes British officials. Yet he formed many warm and valuable friendships with individual Britishers: he seems to have disliked the Whitehall system, but to have found much to admire in the individual wearer of the old school tie. rIS book covers such a wide canvas that it is impossible to review it in detail. But one may, perhaps, dip into it in places, for quotations. That will give you an indication of its quality and scope.

Of his arrival in Papua in 1920.

“When I saw Governor Murray I found him polite, but vague, with a smile that let me know that our work had been

Dr. Sylvester M. Lambert (seated at left) with Dr. A. H. B. Pearce (Chief Medical Officer in Fiji and Central Medical Authority for the Western Pacific). Standing, left to right, are three members of the Fiji Medical Department; Dr. C. H. B. Thompson (Health Officer and Ophthalmologist), Dr. W. M. Ramsay (District Medical Officer, Rewa), and Mr. K. Palmer (Government Pharmacist). All were lecturers at the Central Medical School, Suva, where the photograph was taken five years ago.

thrust upon him, and that every hook worm we would find would be an added insult to his Administration, something that would lead to trouble with the over lords in Melbourne.” (He is a little caustic about the Mur ray Administration, at first; but “I have had time to reverse my first opinion.

Governor Murray . . . died with a fine administrative record.”) Of his work in Papua. —“ln my weeks of preparation, I found that I had the Papuan Club behind me. That meant support from the ablest colonials in the South Pacific: Loudon, Bertie, Sefton, Jewel, Tom Nesbitt and a dozen more . . .

These were the forward-looking ones who wanted native labour restored to health, to revitalise races for whom, at that time, there seemed no future but extinction.”

Of social contacts. —“At the Papuan Club I couldn’t open my mouth for any fly-blown anecdote without there being wild laughter and shouts of ‘More!

More!’ A new man would come in. ‘Harrigan, have you heard , the Doc’s latest? Doc, tell it again!’ I was rather puffed up until I found that what they were laughing at was my funny Yankee accent.”

On the credit side of the indentured labour system. —“ln subsequent surveys, all over the Territory, I could tell, almost with a sweep of the eye, the men who had been on plantations. They were the upstanding, healthy specimens.”

On the shower-bath-can of the Aus tralian-Pacific territories. “The first time you use this Rube Goldberg inven tion you soap yourself carefully under the spray—and the water gives out. The next time you try soaping yourself in your own sweat, which can’t be done.

The third try you just say, ‘Oh, hell,’ and pull the string.”

On missionaries. —“ All that month of tramping, the priests of the Sacred Heart had showered me with these simple kind nesses. They refused all payment and modestly waved aside my thanks. Heredi tary Methodist though I am, I honour them as the best missionaries and the best hosts in New Guinea.”

On the mud of Western Papua. —“l crossed the Gulf and came upon the terrible land of terrible people . . . The Delta region is ravaged by rivers that pour mud upon mud or throw up shift ing sandbanks that wallow and stink like dead sea monsters ... In the Bamu country, I saw the most repulsive people in all Papua. The Bamus live in mud, and nature seems to have fitted them for their environment. They are as skinny and long as dead eels, and appear to be split clean to the breastbone, to give their stork-like legs a chance to hoist them out of the muck . . . This is prob ably the lousiest place that God ever made —and didn’t quite finish.”

On a near-fight in Samarai. —“lnstead of brushing him off, I kicked over my chair and reverted to common Austra lian: ‘Open your mouth to say one word and I’m inta ya, right now!’ The stranger departed. A couple of days later Mrs. Gofton (now the well-known Mrs.

Flo. Stewart, of Wau), who served the bar, said: ‘When that man gets tough around here now I just say to him, “Look out. or I’ll call the doctor.” ’ ”

On the survey of hookworm in Papua. — “With my inspectors, we had covered 8,461 miles . . . We had marked down a grand total of 59.2 per cent, of infection.”

In the course of a scathing description of how Australia took over German New

Guinea. —“Already we were sympathising with Governor Wisdom, for he was breaking up a racket which was as crude as any invented by Brooklyn union leaders. It was the bird-of-paradise racket —which may sound fantastic, but it was there, and had been ever since the military administration did its worst in New Guinea . . . District Officers were up to their necks in poaching. One of them came back from the Dutch border with £IO,OOO in his pocket.”

On Pidgin in New Guinea. —“At last the time came when my vanity was tickled to the verge of hysteria: I had actually learned Pidgin English. To the native, English is Pidgin, and if you do not speak it with classic exactitude, he simply fails to understand you ... I learned how ironbound its rule of idiom and grammar actually are.”

On a man he met in the Solomons. — “Among unsung heroes—but no mission ary—was my friend J. C. Barley, Oxford

M.A., who had voluntarily given his life to a God-forsaken post at Kirakira Ip his jungle house, he was like something out of Kipling, dressing for the evening, having his spot of gin and bitters before dinner, his sound cigar afterwards. He might have gone anywhere in the colonial service, for as a young Oxonian he had outranked hundreds in competitive exam inations. But he was too clean a sports man to play politics. His passion for ethnology and his affectionate responsi bility for the natives kept him where he was.”

On the 'problem of curing hookworm. — “I had found that oil of chenopodium was not working well enough or fast enough to relieve the million patients who reached out for a cure . . . There seemed no answer to that, until help came from an unexpected quarter.”

On his early work in Suva.—" l know that no man was ever more generously helped than I was, with the friendship of Dr. Aubrey Montague on the Govern ment side, and with Sir Maynard Hed strom backing me in the Legislative Council. Hedstrom always stood ready to act as interpreter for my Yankee lingo and Yankee methods, when I had to argue before cautious governors.” • • • There—l have used double the space we had allotted to this fascinating book, and I am only one-third of the way through it. I have not described how Dr. Lambert found the cure for hook worm, how he surveyed Polynesia, how he met—and shrewdly judged—most of the well-known men of the Central Pacific, how he took the Suva Medical School to his heart. Get the book, if you can—it is well worth the trouble and the money. Incidentally, a copious index makes it valuable as a book of reference.

There is so much of importance in this book—for instance, medical and scien tific and common-sense observations concerning the future of the Indians in Fiji, New Zealand’s record in Samoa and Cook Islands, the condition of Tonga, the history and probable future of the Suva Native Medical School—that it will be helpful to all concerned if we quote extensively in further articles in the “PIM”. The dramatic story of how a cure for hookworms was discovered and operated is told elsewhere in this issue.