92 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [Feb., 'll 



MOSQUITO OR MAN? THE CONQUEST OF THE TROPICAL WORLD. In spite 

 of all the interest aroused in the past decade on the subject of the re- 

 lation of insects to disease, authoritative discussions, which, at the same 

 time are thoroughly interesting for the non-technical reader, are rare. 

 There has recently appeared such a book, which holds one's interest from 

 beginning to end, Sir Hubert Boyce's "Mosquito or Man."* By ability 

 to present the facts in a readable, popular style, no less than by a broad 

 first-hand knowledge of his subject, the author, who is dean of the 

 Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, is peculiarly qualified. 



It is in the field of tropical medicine that the application of the dis- 

 coveries of the relations of insects to the transmission of disease has 

 been most far-reaching, and Sir Rubert has fittingly given his book the 

 sub-title "The Conquest of the Tropical World." After a brief dis- 

 cussion of the foundation of the tropical medicine movement in Eng- 

 land, he traces the growth of general and applied sanitation in the 

 tropics and emphasizes that the greatest value of measures along this 

 line has been in the fact that indirectly and incidentally they resulted 

 in a reduction in numbers of disease-carrying insects. For instance, 

 modern methods of obtaining water supplies have resulted in a great 

 reduction of yellow fever throughout the West Indies in the past fifty 

 years. But, "the significance of the relationship of the diminution of 

 yellow fever to the introduction of pipe-borne water is due entirely to 

 the fact that there has been of necessity a diminution of the common 

 breeding places of the house mosquito the Stegomyia calopus the 

 sole carrier of yellow fever." 



An entertaining and concise account of the discoveries which under- 

 lie our present knowledge of insects as carriers of disease is preceded 

 by a chapter on "Miasm, Tradition and Prejudice." As one who has 

 taken part in many campaigns against disease Dr. Boyce has good rea- 

 son to know the depth to which the old doctrine of the miasmatic 

 origin of malaria and yellow fever is rooted. t The popular mind is 

 not yet freed from the idea of "the deadly miasm, which surrounds you 

 on all sides, which you encounter at its worst in the cool eventide or 

 early morning," and even yet, in many regions, it is regarded as a mat- 

 ter of course that the newcomer must fall a prey to the "acclimation 

 fever." On account of this deep-seated belief in man, the pioneer finds 

 it far more easy to overthrow the strongholds of the disease-carrying 



* Mosquito or Man? The Conquest of the Tropical World. By Sir 

 Rubert Boyce, M.B., F.R.S. London, 1909. John Murray. $3.50. 



f One of our best dictionaries in its revised, 1909 edition, defines ma- 

 laria as a fever produced by "morbific exhalations arising from swamps 

 or effluvia from the decomposition of animal or vegetable matter." 



