BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



Quinine is one of the very few genuine, specific cures 

 known to medicine; and since its discovery and general 

 use, it has enabled those who can get it to live safely in 

 malarious regions. But real control and eradication of the 

 disease had to wait upon zoological research. Until 1880 

 everyone supposed that malaria was due to air which was, 

 in some mysterious way, "bad"; but in that year the para- 

 site was discovered; and in 1898 Ross, in India, proved 

 that the parasite can complete its life history and be 

 transmitted into the human host only through the agency 

 of certain definite species of mosquitoes. Thus, the com- 

 bined efforts of the microscopist, the medical man, and the 

 entomologist were necessarily involved in understanding 

 one of the worst enemies of human welfare; and now the 

 elimination of mosquitoes not only from houses but even 

 from entire regions, such as the Panama Canal Zone, is 

 accomplished under the recommendations of scientists who 

 are primarily interested in the zoology — the anatomy, 

 habits, and classification — of mosquitoes and their natural 

 enemies. Great public works, such as the building and 

 maintenance of the Panama Canal, on the one hand, and 

 the comfort and economic success of whole populations on 

 the other, are thus dependent, in large degree, upon 

 zoological research. 



Hookworm disease, called malcoeur, tuntun, miner's 

 itch, and chlorosis, in various parts of the world, was 

 known in antiquity and now afflicts hundreds of millions 

 of people throughout the warm regions of the globe. Its 

 victims are weak, lazy, shiftless, despondent — a most 

 immoral lot. We who are without parasitic worms gnawing 

 at our vitals can cheerfully cast the first stone and preach 

 of sins and virtues ... or, if we are zoologists, we can 

 study the life history oi Necator amerkanus , and thus provide 

 medical men with the knowledge that will enable them to 

 make good people out of bad. Just this has been done; and 



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