How much Southern history did the thing explain?
Was it not forces like this, and not statesmen and generals, that really controlled the destinies of mankind?
Page's North Carolina country people had for generations been denounced as "crackers," and as "hill-billies," but here was the discovery that the great mass of them were ill--as ill as the tuberculosis patients in the Adirondacks.

Free these masses from the enervating parasite that consumed all their energies--for Dr.Stiles had discovered that the disease afflicted the great majority of the rural classes--and a new generation would result.

Naturally the cause strongly touched Page's sympathies.

He laid the case before the ever sympathetic Dr.Buttrick, but here again progress was slow.

By hard hammering, however, he half converted Dr.Buttrick, who, in turn, took the case of the hookworm to his old associate, Dr.Frederick T.Gates.What Page was determined to obtain was a million dollars or so from Mr.John D.Rockefeller, for the purpose of engaging in deadly warfare upon this pest.