FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



three men. I pulled out my hand lens, knelt on my cot and 

 began to examine a spot on the wall. 



"What are you doing?" said one of my roommates. 



"I have just found a yellow fever mosquito," I said. 



"My God!" said one of them, and they collected their luggage 

 and left, leaving the whole room to me. 



I spent a number of days in New Orleans, talking with Dr. 

 White and going about with several of his able assistants (Dr. 

 Rupert Blue, afterwards Surgeon-General of the Public Health 

 Service, was one of them). I saw several demonstrations of fumi- 

 gants, took a lot of photographs, and finally returned to Wash- 

 ington filled with enthusiasm over the wonderful results 

 accomplished by Dr. White and his able assistants and the 

 organizations of the prominent citizens of New Orleans. It was a 

 magnificent demonstration of the value of the discovery of the 

 mosquito carriage of the disease. The work carried on and based 

 on this discovery undoubtedly saved thousands of lives, and 

 established a fine confidence in the minds of almost everyone 

 in our ability to prevent the disease in the future. 



I was delighted when I was told by one or two of the leading 

 citizens that they had made excellent use of my book on 

 mosquitoes and their prevention and destruction, published four 

 years before. 



And now definitely to return to malaria: I visited the historic 

 Roman Campagna for the first time in 1902, but I was in Italy 

 for another purpose and did not meet the workers on malaria 

 on this journey. I did, however, get an idea, and a very vivid 

 one, of the comparative poverty of that region from the agri- 

 cultural point of view, a natural consequence of generations of 

 saturation by this disease. 



Later, by reading Italian publications, and by the accounts 



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