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Show COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 13 disclosed prevalence of tuberculosis and of trachoma, appeals were made to Congress, which for 1910 made a special appropriation of $12,000, for 1911 a special appropriation of $40,000, for 1912 a special appropriation of $60?000, and for 1913 a special appropriation of $90,000. These special appropriations enabled the office to establish five sanatoria; to send ophthalmologists to centers of trachoma prev-alence to supervise and direct the staff of resident medical employees which in 1911 had grown to 100 physicians employed in established positions, 60 contract physicians, 54 nurses, and 88 field matrons; and finally to conduct a campaign for education of Indians, both young and old, in the elements of sanitation and of healthful habits. In 1905 the whole cost of the medical service of this office--salaries of physicians and the like and cost oS medical supplies-as paid from appropriations available, was $120,000; in 1909 it was $166,000; in 1911 it was about $260,000. This increase in six years of more than 110 per cent in expenditures on behalf of the In@ans7 physical well-being has been accompanied by an even greater effectiveness of expen-ditures. Ten years ago there was not only indifference to questions of health but payments of salaries to physicians were unaccompanied by provision of such equipment that the physician could travel the great extent of territory to which he was assigned and among as many as 5,000 Indians perform with his own hands the whole gamut of major and minor operations and treat every ailment lmown to medicine. In a measure the increased expenditure of recent years represents the cost of transmuting into direct efficiency the potential usefulness of positions which already existed. Intoxicants are almost as great a menace to Indians as disease. Recognizing the great harmfulness of intoxicating liquors for In-dians, Congress has for more than 100 years maintained a fixed and unchanging policy of absolute prohibition upon traffic with Indians in intoxicating liquors. The act of March 80,1802 (2 Stat. L., 246), conferred on the President authority to prevent or restrain introduc- , tion or distribution of spirituous liquors among Indian tribes; in 1815 Congress prohibited stills in Indian country; and in 1832 Con-gress provided '' no ardent spirits shall be hereafter introduced, un-der any pretense, into the Indian country.'' Until 1906, however, enforcement of these statutes and subsequent enactments was left to Indian agents and superintendents and their Indian police, assisted so far as might be by local peace officers and by representatives of the Department of Justice. In 1906 criminal dockets in Indian Ter-ritory became so crowded and the possibility of early trial so remote that disregard of the statutes forbidding introduction of intoxicants assumed large importance. To meet the emergency Congress, in the act of June 21,1906, appropriated $25,000 to be used to suppress the traffic in intoxicating liquors among Indians, and in August, 1906, |
