The Midday Sun

White people who live in tropical climates--according to Kipling, Conrad, Somerset Maugham and other tale-spinners--generally suffer a morbid decay called tropical deterioration. Not so, say the scientists. A monumental study recently published in Medicine argues that white men, if well-fed and guarded against disease, can thrive in the tropics.

One indication is the excellent health of World War II troops in the jungles and tropical heat of the Southwest Pacific and Southeast Asia. Two teams of U.S. and Canadian Army doctors and scientists, seizing a ready-made opportunity to conduct one of the first big-scale studies ever made of white men in the tropics, examined thousands of U.S. and British soldiers on Guadalcanal, Guam, Iwo Jima, the Philippines, Burma. Findings:

P: Soldiers (and civilians) were generally fit and efficient even after five continuous years in hot, humid areas.

P: Thousands of white soldiers worked unprotected in the noonday sun, often-bareheaded, without ill effects.

P: After months of continuous fighting and hard labor, G.I.s (though averaging five to ten pounds underweight) were in excellent physical shape--as fit as troops training in the U.S. and much fitter than garrison troops in Hawaii (who went a little soft).

P: Aside from dysentery and minor skin diseases (e.g., heat rash) and eye troubles (from dust and sun glare), the troops were notably free from disease. There was no heat stroke, little malaria.

Why did the G.I.s stay healthy? The doctors' reasons: good food, plenty of water and salt, scientifically designed clothes, insect control, new drugs (e.g., atabrine). Wartime scientific research, which solved many of the problems of tropical living, also debunked a few old notions: that meat-eating in the tropics is bad, that white men cannot do physical labor in the hot season, that only "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun."

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