30 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 6 



the very men Avho accomplished this magnificent work have changed 

 their views. AVc quote from Dr. H. R. Carter, "Yet Gorgas now be- 

 Heves, and I think all who participated in the work here concur with 

 him unreservedly, tliat his success in Havana and on the Isthmus was 

 due to the war .waged against the Stegomyia directly, by the destruc- 

 tion of their breeding places, undertaken as an adjuvant to the isola- 

 tion of the sick, rather than to that isolation itself; to the control of 

 the insect rather than of the human host." 



As Doctor Carter points out, the elimination of the disease by the 

 management of the human host failed because that host could not be 

 controlled. AVe believe that the experience with yellow fever will be 

 duplicated in practically all insect-borne diseases. Apparently healthy 

 carriers will always interfere with attack against the disease through 

 the human host. Nothing short of the suppression of the insect host 

 will yield satisfactory results, and it is most encouraging that medical 

 men seem practically universally to have arrived at this conclusion. 

 The recent work of Celli in Italy in which medication with quinine 

 rather than Anopheles destruction is the basis, is an exception. 



The recent work on Stomoxys calcitrans and poliomyelitis shows in a 

 striking manner one of the incidental reactions of such discoveries on 

 the entomologist. The work of Brues, Sheppard and Rosenau ele- 

 vates the stable fly immediately from a position of one which has but 

 little interest, except in connection with live stock, to one of extreme 

 importance in connection with a most distressing human disease. 

 Full information regarding the fly is immediately demanded. We 

 turn to the literature to find it,,but discover that as far as the American 

 writings are concerned everj'thing is covered in an aggregate of six 

 to ten pages. It now becomes necessarj^ for the entomologist to 

 study the insect in all its habits and stages. 



There are probably many cases in which insects come into important 

 connection with diseases other than as carriers. Take the case of 

 pellagra, for instance. The students of this malady are divided into 

 two very distinct schools : those who believe in the causation by spoiled 

 corn and those who adhere to the theory of insect transmission. If 

 the zeistic school, to which practically all of the Italian investigators 

 belong, should be found to be right, insects would still come into con- 

 sideration in connection with the deterioration of the corn. In this 

 countrj^ as elsewhere, the injury to corn by insects begins in the field 

 and continues when the harvest is placed in storage. Thus if it is an 

 Aspergillus or a Penecillium that causes the disease, the insects injuring 

 the stored product and starting decay are likely to have some con- 

 nection with it. 



