Porto Ricochet

''Porto Ricans . . . are beyond doubt the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere. What the island needs is not public health work but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population. It might then be livable. I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off 8."

Late one night last November young Dr. Cornelius Packard ("Dusty") Rhoads of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Re-search returned to his quarters at San Juan, Porto Rico, and found that someone had stolen a cushion and some accessories from the motorcar he used. After six wearing months of treating balky Puertorriquenos for pernicious anemia (his research Arbeit), after again that evening giving his blood (six quarts in all) to anemic natives, Dr. Rhoads lost his temper. To work off his anger he wrote a personal letter which included the above quotation. That made him feel better. So he threw the note among his waste papers and went to bed.

Next morning one Luis Baldoni, young Puertorriqueno working for the Rockefeller staff at San Juan, found the discarded note, ran with it to Pedro Albizu y Campos, president of the Nationalist Party of Porto Rico. That shrewd politico at once ordered photostatic copies of the letter. A political struggle for control of the island legislature was on, and here was a mighty club to wield. Natives might be made to believe that the Yanquis were plotting to kill them all. At any rate the point was worth clamoring about.

Last month Politico Albizu y Campos struck. Local newspapers printed fac similes of the letter. For those unable to read English, there were translations into Spanish. Every third Puertorriqueno is il literate. To such, spellbinders read the horrendous tidings. The Pope in Vatican City received a photostat of the holograph.

With the insular legislature about to begin its quarrelsome session last week, newly appointed Governor James Rumsey Beverley ordered an investigation. In charge were Ramon Quinones; Dr. Ed-wardo Garrido Morales, representing the insular health department; and Dr. Pablo Morales y Otero, representing the Medical Association of Porto Rico. Dr. George Calvin Payne, resident representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, stood by with Dr. William Bosworth Castle, Dr. Rhoads' immediate associate in the pernicious anemia research. Dozens of Puertorri quenos testified that Dr. Rhoads had saved their lives, had given them his own blood.

In Manhattan Dr. Simon Flexner, director of the Rockefeller Institute, who, 68, is just twice as old as Dr. Rhoads, demonstrated how stanch a friend he is to every member of his staff. They had worked together for two years on the in fantile paralysis problem, and Dr. Flexner could vouch for the validity of the explanation which Dr. Rhoads last week sent to Governor Beverley: "Regret very much that fantastic and playful composition written entirely for my own diversion and intended as parody on supposed attitude of some American minds in Porto Rico should have become public document and taken literally by any one. Of course nothing in the document was ever in-tended to mean other than opposite of what was stated. Nevertheless, if slightest seriousness is really attached to any aspect of this subject I will be glad to return to Porto Rico immediately and place myself at your disposal."

Dr. Rhoads was not obliged to leave his researches in Manhattan. But that, of course, did not terminate the agitation which was ricocheting throughout Porto Rico, an agitation typical of the prejudice with which the Foundation is obliged to contend in many backward countries.

As everyone in Science knows, the Rockefeller Institute, harbor of two Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine (Drs. Alexis Carrel and Karl Landsteiner) is where Nobel Prize Winner in Literature Sinclair Lewis' Dr. Martin Arrowsmith worked. Paul de Kruif, able bacteriologist, who gave Author Sinclair all the learned facts and scientific color for Arrowsmith, put in two years at the Rockefeller Institute.

Dr. Rhoads is no dour, highstrung, achey Dr. Arrowsmith. He is a jovial, rollicking young man who has topped every group he ever has been with. He was president of his high school graduating class at Springfield, Mass., marshal of Bowdoin, 1920, president of Harvard Medical, 1924. Both his A.B. and M.D. degrees were cum laude.

His six months' stay in Porto Rico was very productive, promises to be one of the best things that ever happened to the populace there. He and Dr. Castle developed a thoroughgoing and inexpensive remedy for pernicious anemia. They are waiting for a professional journal to publish the details.

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