February, '13] HUNTER: MEDICAL ENTOMOLOGY 27 



PART II 



President W. D. Hunter: I will ask first vice-president Headlee 

 to take the chair. 



Vice-President Headlee: We will now have the pleasure of lis- 

 tening to the annual address of the President. 



AMERICAN INTEREST IN MEDICAL ENTOMOLOGY 



By W. D. Hunter, Bureau of Entomology 



Introductory 



There is no doubt that medical entomology is the branch of the 

 science which is most in the public eye at this time. The discoveries 

 that have been made in very recent years are most astonishing in 

 their importance and equally so in the rapidity with which they have 

 crowded upon one another. We are inclined, possibly, to look upon 

 medical entomology as a subject which is of more vital interest to 

 other nations than it is to the United States. A large portion of the 

 literature is devoted to sleeping sickness, filariasis, trypanosomiasis 

 and other diseases which have not yet affected directly the people of 

 this country. General interest in the subject has recently been intensi- 

 fied by a number of noteworthy publications by Americans, but the 

 writer is under the impression that the general importance of the sub- 

 ject is not fully realized by American entomologists. It is for this 

 reason that the opportunity is taken to point out some of the respects 

 in which American entomologists are especially concerned. 



There is danger that the recent activity in England through the 

 schools of Tropical Medicine and the Entomological Research Com- 

 mittee will tend to place other countries ahead of this one in their 

 contributions to medical entomology. Foreign nations recognize 

 that in applied entomology there is only one field in which we are sur- 

 passed, namely, the study of forest insects. In that field we are 

 making rapid progress, and a distinguished German student. Dr. K. 

 Escherich, has recently written that unless his country bestirs itself, it 

 will soon be distanced by the Uniteld States. Considerations other 

 than our obligations to our constituents therefore impel us to view 

 the subject of medical entomology with some attention. 



We do not overlook the fact that work done in America has affected 

 profoundly the subject throughout the world. The work of 

 Smith and Kilbourne on splenetic fever of cattle helped to lay the original 

 foundation for the study of insect-transmitted diseases. This 

 •discdvery, following Hanson's work on Filaria transmission by a 



