ECONOMIC LOSS FROM MOSQUITOES. 



LOSS FROM MALARIA. 



The senior author, in a publication of the U. S. Department of Agriculture 

 entitled " Economic loss to the people of the United States through insects that 

 carry disease/' has discussed the effect of malaria as follows : 



" The west coast of Africa, portions of India, and many other tropical regions 

 have always, at least down to the present period, been practically uninhabitable 

 by civilized man, owing to the presence of pernicious malaria. The industrial 

 and agricultural development of Italy has been hindered to an incalculable 

 degree by the prevalence of malaria in the southern half of the Italian peninsula, 

 as well as in the valley of the Po and elsewhere. The introduction and spread of 

 malaria in Greece is stated by Eonald Eoss, and with strong reasons, to have 

 been largely responsible for the progressive physical degeneration of one of the 

 strongest races of the earth. 



" In the United States, malaria, if not endemic, was early introduced. The 

 probabilities are that it was endemic, and it is supposed that the cause of the 

 failure of the early colonies in Virginia was due to this disease. It is certain 

 that malaria retarded in a marked degree the advance of civilization over the 

 North American continent, and particularly was this the case in the march of 

 the pioneers throughout the Middle West and throughout the Gulf States west to 

 the Mississippi and beyond. In many large regions once malarious the disease 

 has lessened greatly in frequency and virulence owing to the reclamation of 

 swamp areas and the lessening of the number of the possible breeding places of 

 the malarial mosquitoes, but the disease is still enormously prevalent, particu- 

 larly so in the southern IJnited States. There are many communities and many 

 regions in the North where malaria is unknown, but in many of these localities 

 and throughout many of these regions Anopheles mosquitoes breed, and the 

 absence of malaria means simply that malarial patients have not entered these 

 regions at the proper time of the year to produce a spread of the malady. It has 

 happened again and again that in communities where malaria was previously un- 

 known it has suddenly made its appearance and spread in a startling manner. 

 These cases are to be explained, as happened in Brookline, Mass., by the intro- 

 duction of Italian laborers, some of whom were malarious, to work upon the 

 reservoir; or, as happened at a fashionable summer resort near New York City, 

 by the appearance of a coachman who had had malaria elsewhere and had re- 

 lapsed at this place. In such ways, with a rapidly increasing population, malaria 

 is still spreading in this country. 



" To attempt an estimate of the economic loss from the prevalence of malaria 

 in the United States is to attempt a most difficult task. Prof. Irving Fisher, in 

 one of his papers before the recent International Tuberculosis Congress, declared 

 that tuberculosis costs the people of the United States more than a billion dollars 

 each year. In this estimate Professor Fisher considered the death rate for con- 

 sumption, the loss of the earning capacity of the patients, the period of in- 

 validism, and the amount of money expended in the care of the sick, together 

 with other factors. In making these estimates he had a much more definite basis 

 than can be gained for malaria. The death rate from malaria (as malaria) is 

 comparatively small and is apparently decreasing. Exact figures for the whole 

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