446 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 



also in the open spaces between the small and scattered settlements. During 

 the past two years cases of malaria on Staten Island are becoming very 

 rare and for the past year Doctor Doty has been unable to secure any Anoph- 

 eles, whereas in the beginning of the investigation they were found almost 

 everywhere on the Island. The statistics of the Department of Health indicate 

 the decrease of malaria from 1905 on. Prior to 1905 malaria was not regularly 

 reported, but the number of cases was surely very much greater than that re- 

 ported in that year. Since 1905, however, they are stated to have been as follows : 

 1905, 33 cases; 1906, 54 cases; 1907, 4 cases; 1908, 6 cases; 1909, 5 cases. 



The work of exterminating malarial mosquitoes has been necessarily slow, 

 as the area involved is considerable, the Island being about 16 miles long and 

 four to six miles wide, with large areas between the various towns. The popula- 

 tion probably is over eighty thousand inhabitants. 



The expense of the operations down to 1910 was about $50,000 ; this of course 

 includes the expense of the extensive drainage operations in the salt marshes. 

 Doctor Doty, in addition to being the Health Officer of the port of New York, 

 is a Commissioner of Health of New York City, and carried out this work in his 

 capacity as a municipal officer and not as a State official. 



There were some earlier and very much smaller pieces of work, which have 

 previously been described by one of us. 



Dr. W. N. Berkeley, in the Medical Record of January 26, 1901, gave an 

 interesting account of a malarial outbreak in a small town near New York City 

 during the summer of 1900. Around a large pond in the vicinity of the town four 

 or five cases had developed in August. The first case was that of a coachman 

 who had caught malaria elsewhere and had relapsed. From his quarters 

 in a long row of stables on one side of the pond the infection had been passed 

 along to other stablemen and servants on the same side, to the distance of a 

 quarter of a mile from the original site ; a quarter of a mile in another direc- 

 tion, across the pond, one other case appeared in a small child. Dr. Berkeley went 

 to the town and discovered that Anopheles quadrimaculatus was fairly abundant 

 in every bedroom of that area in which proper search was made. The breeding- 

 places seemed to be segregated pools at the end of the pond (the pond itself con- 

 tained fish) and post-holes and excavations. These last were numerous, as many 

 buildings were going up. The following practical measures were adopted : ( 1 ) 

 Extermination of all the Anopheles found in houses by a party of men sent out 

 for the purpose, followed by a systematic introduction of screens in windows 

 and doors; (2) filling in of the smaller breeding-places and the drainage of 

 the pond; (3) the protection of every malarious patient by netting and other- 

 wise from the bite of mosquitoes, so long as he had malarial parasites in his 

 blood. The results were as prompt as they were gratifying. Not a single new 

 case of malaria developed ; Anopheles disappeared entirely from houses where 

 it had been common, and Culex was greatly diminished in numbers. 



It will thus appear that, considering the economic loss existing in the United 

 States through malaria, nothing like the competent work has been done that 

 should have been done within the territorial limits of the United States them- 



