THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



of Italian efforts published in other languages, I became thor- 

 oughly familiar with the great work that had been organized 

 there, and in 1905 met some of the workers and talked with 

 them. 



It was not, however, until 1910 that I had my first insight 

 into the great economic importance of the results that had been 

 accomplished under the auspices of the great Italian society for 

 the study of malaria, supported, as it was, not only by govern- 

 ment subsidy, but by a large sum from the privy purse of the 

 King. I landed at Naples in early June, and in company with 

 a very delightful young physician from Philadelphia, Dr. Vail, 

 whom I had met on the steamer, went up to Rome and called 

 on Dr. Angelo Celli at the Medical Department of the University 

 of Rome. I had corresponded with Celli and had read his fine 

 book on malaria in the Enghsh translation, and I knew the 

 remarkable results of his experiments on the Campagna in the 

 way of protecting the agricultural laborers, engaged in the 

 harvest, by the screening of their huts, and the railway employees 

 by the screening of the station buildings. This had always seemed 

 to me a palliative only. I had always been and still am an 

 advocate of Anopheles destruction. I may state incidentally that 

 when the Rockefeller Institute financed Dr. C. C. Bass in his 

 quininization work in Bolivar County, Mississippi, I suggested 

 to Dr. Rose, then director of the Health Department of the 

 Institute, that another county in the same State be selected, and 

 that I be given the opportunity to control malaria there solely by 

 Anopheles destruction. So when I met Celli that morning I 

 told him about all this, and his instant reply was that his method 

 of protection and quininization was much cheaper, and that 

 mosquito control on the Campagna was entirely out of the 

 question, largely on account of the enormous expense. Drainage 

 operations were very difficult on account of the character of the 



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