MEDICAL ENTOMOLOGY — HOWARD. 577 



insects and as to their probable biology, and Professor Newstead, of 

 the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, another competent en- 

 tomologist, was also consulted. But a new element was added to 

 the investigation when W. F. Fiske, a former expert of the United 

 States Bureau of Entomology, was employed by the Tropical Diseases 

 Bureau, of London, in 1911, and proceeded with a competent expedi- 

 tion to Uganda, where he studied the problem from the viewpoint 

 of his broad experience in field entomology until the outbreak of the 

 Great War. In 1919 he returned to Africa, where he is at present. 

 His preliminary reports have been published and are of great inter- 

 est from a broad biological point of view as well as in their prac- 

 tical suggestions. It will be impossible to dwell at further length 

 upon Fiske's work in view of the interesting and important investi- 

 gations that have been carried on by an army of other observers, and it 

 is especially mentioned here because he is the first American broadly 

 trained in economic zoology to give his entire attention to this 

 problem. 



The problem of the control of sleeping sickness by the control of 

 the breeding places of the fly, or perhaps of its other hosts in the 

 shape of wild animals, has not yet been settled, but it is hoped that 

 the numbers of the flies may be greatly reduced by the destruction, 

 or the alteration in the character, of its present breeding places or by 

 the preparation of attractive breeding places where it may be ex- 

 terminated in the pupa condition. Fiske predicts that with the set- 

 tlement and cultivation of the country the disease will eventually 

 disappear. 



We must now return chronologically to another tick disease, 

 namely, the Eocky Mountain spotted fever of man. For the past 48 

 years a disease which has come to be known as Eocky Mountain 

 spotted fever has been known in portions of Montana and Idaho, and 

 cases have also been reported from a number of other Western 

 States, including Washington, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, 

 California, and Oregon. It is characterized by chills and fever and 

 a characteristic skin eruption. The mortality widely differs in dif- 

 ferent localities, ranging from 4 per cent in Idaho to as high as 75 

 per cent in the Bitter Eoot Valley of Montana. The credit for the 

 full establishment of the relation between the disease and certain ticks 

 is given to Dr. H. T. Eicketts, who conducted carefully guarded 

 experiments in 1906 which indisputably proved the relationship. 

 Eicketts himself, however, gives the credit for the first experimental 

 evidence in support of the tick hypothesis to McCalla and Brereton, 

 who conducted two positive experiments a year earlier. As early as 

 1902 Wilson and Chowning had reported the causative organism of 

 the fever to be related to that which causes the Texas fever of cattle, 

 but Stiles after carefully working on the problem in 1905 failed to 



