LOCAL DECREASE OF MALARIA 237 



its disappearance in that country had been due entirely to the improved drainage 

 of the marshes or fens. It is comparatively recently that the marshy and fen 

 districts have lost their malarious reputation. At present, however, cases of 

 endemic malaria appear to be unknown in England, although sporadic cases are 

 met with rarely. 



The early conditions in certain of the United States were very similar, and 

 the improved conditions are due to the same cause. In the great agricultural 

 middle western States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, 

 where malaria played such great havoc during their settlement through more 

 than the first half of the nineteenth century, there were great areas of swamp 

 land, and it is in those states that swamp reclamation as a whole has been 

 carried out on the largest scale. At the present time these great areas, once 

 breeders of Anopheles in extraordinary numbers, constitute the most fertile and 

 productive land in the whole region. How recently and how rapidly the change 

 has come about is indicated, for one locality in Michigan, by Jordan and 

 Hefferan (loc. cit.), and may be quoted: 



" A. The Locality. — The observations were made in and about the village of 

 Eastmanville, in western Michigan, during the summers of 1902, 1903 and 1904. 

 A white settlement has existed at this point, upon the north bank of the Grand 

 Eiver, twenty miles (river measurement) from its debouchement into Lake 

 Michigan, since about 1840. Prior to that date, and for some time afterward, 

 Indians of the Ottawa and Pottawatomie tribes had villages near this part of 

 the river. The population of the village, never more than a few hundreds, is at 

 present about 150. 



" The soil of the district is clay, covered by a few feet of sand for the most 

 part, but occasionally cropping out. The country-side is almost entirely under 

 cultivation or in pasture land ; little or nothing remains of the marshes or of the 

 heavy timber which formerly covered the area. The north bank of the river, 

 upon which the village lies, rises with somewhat more marked declivity than the 

 south, which is sandy, the channel being here, for two miles, on the north shore. 

 The stream is at this point thirty rods wide; the vegetation of the shores is 

 characterized by low willows and wild rice. North from the river run several 

 ravines, dry in summer except for occasional spring-fed pools. Opposite the 

 village, and separated from the river by a strip fifteen rods wide, part sand and 

 part marshland, is a deep currentless bayou, mud-bottomed, spring-fed, ten rods 

 wide and two miles long. With the exception of a few rods, its shores are 

 timbered ; the vegetation is that of a spring-fed lake. 



" B. Malarial History. — This part of Michigan was in earlier times, accord- 

 ing to tradition, one of the worst malarial districts in a highly malarial state. 

 No records except the general State Eeports for western Michigan are available 

 to show the former prevalence of malaria in Eastmanville, but the testimony of 

 all the older settlers is unanimous. Everyone in the district was a sufferer, and 

 everyone who came to the district expected to contract the disease. Prom the 

 strongest of the laboring men to the infant born on the mother's ague day, the 

 entire population was subject to chills and fever. 



" Such conditions do not now exist. The Michigan State Board of Health 

 Eeports contain interesting statistics regarding the decrease of malaria in Michi- 

 gan during twenty-three years : 



