214 GNATS OR MOSQUITOES — CHAPTER VIII 



lubricating the smaller administrative channels through 

 which they must needs pass after flowing beyond the ken 

 of the large European distributory. In advanced countries, 

 such as Italy, it is quite possible that the isolation of 

 malarious patients might become practicable, especially as 

 the large towns afford places free from the harmful species 

 of Mosquitoes in which patients could be treated in the 

 ordinary hospitals, without any special precautions for 

 keeping out the insects ; but apart from the stupendous 

 number of cases to be dealt with, such measures are out of 

 the question in any malarious British dependency, and most 

 emphatically so in India, where any attempt at enforcing 

 isolation would infallibly result in political disturbance of 

 the most serious character. To anyone who has passed a 

 few months in the East such a statement will seem a 

 superfluous truism, but so astounding and scathing are the 

 comments on Indian administrative matters that are made 

 by confident critics, as conversant with our social and 

 climatic conditions as they are of those of the planet Mars, 

 that it may not be out of place to record it. 



Turning now to the stage passed within the Mosquito, 

 it is obvious that as we have no means of distinguishing 

 infected from healthy insects, the solution of the problem 

 lies either in the destruction of mosquitoes, or by avoiding 

 being bitten by them. The consideration of the second 

 class of precaution comes under the heading of personal 

 prophylaxis, while the first must depend mainly on com- 

 munal action. Measures designed to diminish the multi- 

 plication of Mosquitoes are of two classes, viz., those 

 designed to check their increase by doing away with the 

 conditions that favour their breeding, and secondly, those 

 that aim at the extermination of the race while leaving 

 them to multiply at their own sweet will. Of the two, 

 the first is, without question, the more efficient, but the 

 practical sanitarian will not disdain to avail himself of the 

 other class of expedient whenever it is practicable. It will 

 be years before much can, however, be accomplished in the 

 way of the really radical measures of the first class, and 

 for the present we must content ourselves mainly with 

 temporary expedients. 



