442 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 



" Celli and his collea^es and supporters have the respect and affection of all 

 the inhabitants of the Campagna, and the wonderful work which their eminent 

 knowledge and great energy have accomplished is a model for other nations." 



The Italian Society for the Study of Malaria, under whose auspices this 

 magnificent work was done, was founded in July, 1898, by Angelo Celli, Giustino 

 Fortunati, and Leopoldo Franchetti. In " Malaria, Internationales Archiv," 

 for October, 1908, Professor Celli reviews the work of the Societa per gli Studi 

 della Malaria, and gives a summary of its results in these ten years which should 

 be published here : 



" 1. Has confirmed and perfected the new mosquito-malarial theory of Eoss ; 



" 2. Has contributed new facts to the etiology, pathology, clinic, and therapy 

 of the malarial infection; 



" 3. Has thoroughly studied the epidemiology of malaria according to the new 

 theory, disclosing the agreements and lacunae which have yet to be filled up ; 



" 4. Has improved the prophylaxis of malaria and has introduced into practice 

 the new mechanical prophylaxis based on the defense of the habitation and the 

 person from the bites of mosquitoes. This being a relatively expensive prophy- 

 laxis, the Society has occupied itself with improving the antiplasmodic pro 

 phylaxis, making use largely of state quinine both for the most radical treat- 

 ment possible and for the prophylaxis of malaria ; 



" 5. Thence it has promoted and defended legislation in state quinine and in 

 its gratuitous distribution to all the workers and to the poor living in malarial 

 localities — a legislation which has been already adopted by other nations ; 



" 6. In order to render possible this prophylaxis and to prolong the treatment 

 as long as possible, it has had prepared the quinine in its most agreeable form — 

 namely that of comfits and chocolates, the latter containing tannate of quinine, 

 which has little taste and is better tolerated by children, and by those adults who 

 cannot tolerate the ordinary quinine salts ; 



" 7. With the propaganda of the facts and popular hygienic education, it has 

 helped to organize the new national campaign against malaria ; 



" 8, The results have been that since 1902, when the law on state quinine was 

 promulgated, while the consumption of quinine has been yearly increasing, the 

 mortality from malaria has, on the contrary, diminished almost three-fourths 

 throughout Italy (from 16,000 to about 4000 deaths yearly) ; and in the Anny, 

 Custom-House ojffices and in some Communes, where the new laws have been 

 better applied, the morbidity from malaria has greatly diminished ; 



'' 9. With the above-mentioned prophylaxis, eventually combined with the 

 mechanical one, people can finally live and dwell in places which formerly they 

 had to fly from, owing to the danger of malarial fevers ; and consequently to-day 

 one can better and more regularly carry out the hydraulic and agrarian sani- 

 tation. 



" 10. Our Society has endeavoured also to improve the execution of this, and 

 of the relative laws, because by means of the agricultural and agrarian trans- 

 formation of the land and colonization, rather than by the destruction of mos- 

 quitoes (a thing impossible to be done by us on a large scale), one can and must 

 proceed to the definite liberation of the territor}' from malaria." 



