The establishment in the Medical School of a new department which will give systematic instruction and carry on research in the study and treatment of tropical diseases, and the announcement that Dr. Richard Pearson Strong has been appointed Professor of Tropical Medicine is a significant step in the development of the science of medicine. This addition to the Medical School concerns a field of investigation of widespread importance. In the tropics the advance of the white man is constantly impeded by the attacks of tropical diseases, and the existence even of he natives is imperiled. To overcome these conditions would be one of the greatest possible services to mankind.

For the propagation of this work Dr. Strong is eminently fitted. He has won international distinction by his investigations and accomplishments in China, where he and a colleague, at the risk of their own lives and under the most trying circumstances, carried on a winning fight against the ravages of the pneumonic plague. After all other Americans had turned back, discouraged by the obstacles of lack of equipment and persistence of racial superstition, Dr. Strong took up the work and in spite of almost insurmountable difficulties carried it to a successful completion.

Because of his training and accomplishments Dr. Strong is particularly fitted to carry on the war against tropical diseases, and at the Harvard Medical School he will find the best advantages obtainable for the continuance of his work. There he will find able co-operation in all the branches of allied sciences, and an equipment practically complete for the conduct of his investigation. The coming of Dr. Strong and the establishment of the department of Tropical Medicine is another link in the chain that binds together the cause of scientific research and the welfare of the community, and marks one more step in the advance of the Medical School to leadership among medical institutions in America.