JOURNAL 



OF 



ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 



OFFICIAL ORGAN AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGISTS 



Vol. 2 AUGUST, 1909 No. 4 



MEDICAL ENTOMOLOGY, ITS SCOPE AND METHODS^ 



By William B. Herms, Universitij of California 



The importance of the study of insects in many departments of 

 human interest is being the more fully recognized as science reveals 

 the facts of inter-relationships, both advantageous and destructive. 

 The principal concern has been with the control of insects destructive 

 to farm crops, and well it has been, in view of the many millions of 

 dollars lost annually by insect ravages. Students of animal hus- 

 bandry and of veterinary medicine are fully awake to the losses 

 incurred by insect pests. IMosquitoes and flies have for centuries 

 past been looked upon as a source of extreme annoyance to the 

 human family, but that these insects might be transmitters of disease 

 was hardly even suspected until the latter part of the last century, 

 when Dr. A. F. King presented his arguments before the Philosophical 

 Society at Washington, D. C. That insects and arachnids of a given 

 species might be the sole transmitters of a specific disease and what is 

 more, a necessary factor, inasmuch as these insects serve as intermedi- 

 ate hosts, was not considered seriously until the last five years of 

 the last and the beginning of this century, when Smith and colaborat- 

 ors showed the existing relation of the cattle tick to texas fever and 

 Laveran, Ross, Grassi and others the role of mosquitoes in malaria. 

 Today our knowledge of the transmission of diseases by insects has 

 been greatly increased by the work of a host of investigators. Among 

 other specific cases we know that malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes 

 of the genus Anopheles, yellow fever by mosquitoes of the species 



^A paper presented at the Pacific Coast Entomological Conference convened, 

 in Berkeley, California, April 20-23, 1909. 



