326 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 



were 192 deaths at Pensacola: in 1887, 62 deaths in the Southern States; in 

 1893, 52 deaths; in 1897, 484; in 1898, 2456 cases with 117 deaths; in 1903, 

 139 deaths were recorded, mostly at Laredo, Tex., and in 1905 there was a 

 serious outbreak at New Orleans and in neighboring towns, including one 

 locality in Mississippi, in which 911 deaths were recorded for the whole country. 



" The actual loss of life from yellow fever during all these years, when com- 

 pared with the loss from other diseases, has been comparatively slight, but the 

 death rate is perhaps the most insignificant feature of the devastation which 

 yellow fever epidemics have produced, and the disease itself has been but a small 

 part of the affliction which it has brought to the Southern States. The disease 

 once discovered in epidemic form, the whole country has become alarmed ; com- 

 merce in the affected region has come virtually to a standstill; cities have been 

 practically deserted ; people have died from exposure in camping out in the high- 

 lands; rigid quarantines have been established; innocent persons have been 

 shot while trying to pass these quarantine lines ; all industry for the time has 

 ceased. The commerce of the South during the epidemic of 1878, for example, 

 fell off 90 per cent, and the hardships of the population can not be estimated 

 in monetary terms. With such industrial and commercial conditions existing 

 from Texas to South Carolina, many industries at the North have suffered, and, 

 in fact, the effect of a yellow fever summer in the South has been felt not only all 

 over the United States, but in many other portions of the world. 



" All these conditions, as bad as they have been, do not sum up the total loss to 

 the national prosperity during past years. Cities like Galveston, New Orleans, 

 Mobile, Memphis, Jacksonville, and Charleston, subject to occasional epidemics, 

 as they have been in the past, have not prospered as they should have done. 

 Their progress has been greatly impeded by this one cause, and thus the in- 

 dustrial development of the entire South has been greatly retarded." 



ENDEMIC DISEASES AS AFFECTING THE PROGRESS OF 



NATIONS.* 



" In referring to the spread of malaria in Greece, the relation of this disease to 

 the rise and fall of national power has been touched upon in an earlier para- 

 graph. The subject is one of the widest importance and deserves a more ex- 

 tended consideration. 



" The following paragraphs are quoted from Eonald Ross's address on Malaria 

 in Greece, delivered before the Oxford Medical Society, November 29, 1906 : 



" * Now, what must be the effect of this ubiquitous and everlasting inci^bus 

 of disease on the people of modem Greece? Remember that the malady is 

 essentially one of the infancy among the native population. Infecting the child 

 one or two years after birth, it persecutes him until puberty with a long succes- 

 sion of febrile attacks, accompanied by much splenomegaly and anaemia. 

 Imagine the effect it would produce upon our own children here in Britain. 

 It is true that our children suffer from many complaints — scarlatina, measles, 

 whooping cough — but these are of brief duration and transient. But now add 

 to these, in imagination, a malady which lasts for years, and may sometimes 

 attack every child in a village. What would be the effect upon our population — 

 especially our rural population — upon their numbers and upon the health and 

 vigour of the survivors ? It must be enormous in Greece. People often seem to 

 think that such a plague strengthens a race by killing off the weaker individuals ; 

 but this view rests upon the unproven assumption that it is really the weaker 

 children which can not survive. On the contrary, experience seems to show that 



* Quoted from Howard, L. O., Economic loss to the people of the United States through 

 insects that carry disease. U. S. Dept. Agr., Bur. Ent., Bull. 78, pp. 36-38, 1909. 



