A FIFTY-YEAR SKETCH-HISTORY OF MEDICAL ENTO 



MOLOGY. 1 



By L. O. Howard, M. D., Ph. D. 



[With 10 plates.] 



A real history of medical entomology would require a year or more 

 in its preparation and should be done, perhaps, by two men, the one 

 a medical man (a pathologist), and the other an entomologist, since 

 a complete history, written by one or the other, would unconsciously 

 emphasize the importance of one side. But the time has come for 

 the preparation of a consecutive account of the main features of the 

 extraordinary development that has taken place in the past few dec- 

 ades; and this article, however faulty and however hastily done, 

 is an attempt to do this. In any history there is always a balancing 

 of the advantages and the disadvantages of a too near or a too dis- 

 tant view of events, and if the present view is too near it may at 

 least contain suggestions for the consideration of the future historian. 



In 1871 the idea that any specific disease might be insect borne was 

 not mentioned in any of the standard medical treatises. In this direc- 

 tion the wcfrld was as ignorant as it was 300 years earlier, when 

 Mercurialis suggested the idea of food contamination by flies coming 

 from the excretions of those dying from the " black death " to visit 

 exposed food supplies. Even this perfectly obvious conclusion of 

 the old Italian physician made little impression, and, although occa- 

 sionally repeated from time to time through the years by one ob- 

 server or another, mainly in reference to Asiatic cholera, flies gen- 

 erally, were regarded as harmless nuisances, and, perhaps, even as 

 beneficial as destroyers of offal in their maggot stage. 



We can hardly blame the workers in medical sciences before the 

 days of microbiology for indifference or for lack of vision in this 

 direction, in spite of the fact that here and there in different parts 

 of the world there existed among the people popular beliefs which 

 connected certain insects with disease. It was so in India, in Africa, 



1 Reprinted, with slight alterations, by permission of the American Public Health Asso- 

 ciation from " A half century of Public Health — Jubilee historical volume of the 

 A. P. H. Assoc," N. T., 1921 (pp. 412-438). 



101257—22 37 565 



