Healthier Marshalls

Like many other Pacific peoples, the Marshall islanders have been ravaged by civilization's diseases as well as their own. Smallpox almost wiped them out; since then, their fertility has been reduced by gonorrhea; they have been laid low by cold epidemics (a serious disease in the Marshalls) which start when ships dock. An ancient problem, native or imported, has been yaws ( a disfiguring, nonvenereal disease caused by a spirochete much like that of syphilis).

Last week came news that the U.S. Navy's medicine has cured the islanders of some of their diseases: using arsenic compounds and sulfa drugs, public health officers have almost eradicated venereal diseases and yaws. Control over yaws is remarkable because at one time the disease afflicted 90% of the people on some atolls.

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