Word: cholera
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...epidemic began four years ago with a savage invasion of the Philippines, and the marauding microbes steadily expanded their area of attack. Java, Sumatra, Thailand, the Indian subcontinent, all suffered high casualty rates. Cholera, a disease that had just been written off as almost conquered, was once more on the rampage...
...detective disciplines. The principal problem: chemists have developed new poisons more rapidly than toxicologists have developed methods of detecting them. At the beginning of the 19th century, the big bugaboo was arsenous oxide (also known as "inheritance powder"), a poison that caused symptoms indistinguishable from those of cholera. In 1832, a simple method was developed to detect the arsenic in a cadaver. But by then the chemists had discovered the vegetable alkaloids-morphine, strychnine, cocaine, nicotine, quinine and so on. These poisons seemed to dissolve without a trace in the body of the victim, and for several decades all attempts...
...thus needs continuous redefinition. Prussia's Karl Clausewitz (who died in 1831 of cholera) gave the modern starting point by defining war as the extension of state policy by other means. To him, victory was "the destruction of the enemy forces," but he held an equally warm regard for the limited objective. Defense was at least as strong a position as offense, and putting the enemy off stride as valuable as knocking him flat. To that extent, generals who could forestall defeat were as honorable as those who won famous victories...
...that "this bill will accomplish the miracles of which today we only dream." His Administration's goal, he said, is nothing less than "complete eradication" of children's deaths from rheumatic fever, substantial reduction of the rate of death from heart disease, and elimination of malaria and cholera "from the entire world." His aim, declared Johnson, is not just "America the Beautiful, but the World the Beautiful." Announcing that his quietly efficient surgeon general, Luther Terry, was resigning after four years, Johnson promised that his successor, yet to be found, would be "the best, most adventurous, imaginative, best...
...three Ds" in his policy of determination, discussions and development. The U.S., he said, has pumped $2 billion into the country since 1954. "With our help," he declared, "South Viet Nam has already doubled its rice production. We have already helped vaccinate over 7,000,000 people against cholera and millions more against other diseases. More than a quarter-million young Vietnamese can now learn in more than 4,000 classrooms that America has helped to build; and 2,000 more schools are going to be built by us in the next twelve months. The number of students in vocational...