February, '13] HUNTER: MEDICAL ENTOMOLOGY 31 



Cooperation Necessary 



This subject is one in which cooperation by a number of classes of 

 investigators is indispensable. Everyone must admit that experi- 

 ments in disease transmission by insects should be conducted coopera- 

 tively by entomological and medical men. Neither class can do the 

 best work and obtain definite results without loss of time unless the 

 other one works shoulder to shoulder with it. In this respect, how- 

 ever, medical entomology does not differ from other departments of 

 the science. In spraying work, for instance, the entomologist neces- 

 sarily cooperates with the chemist and horticulturist. In the medical 

 work he must cooperate with the clinician, the bacteriologist and the 

 protozoologist, but the share of the work devolving upon the entomolo- 

 gist in one case is certainly as great as in the other. 



The recent excellent work of Brues, Sheppard and Rosenau is an 

 example of the rapid progress that can be made and the satisfactory 

 results that can be obtained when the proper cooperation of the two 

 interests concerned is established. The same advantage is expected 

 in the present work of the Bureau of Entomology on the possible trans- 

 mission of pellagra by insects. Messrs. A. H. Jennings and W. V. 

 King, who are engaged in this investigation, have conducted their 

 studies in the closest cooperation with the Thompson-McFadden 

 Pellagra Commission of the New York Post-Graduate School of Medi- 

 cine headed by Capt. J. F. Siler, of the Army Medical Corps, who, by 

 his work in Italy and elsewhere, has become one of the foremost 

 students of the disease. 



Importance of ]\Iedical Entomology in the United States 



One very recent event which has caused medical entomology to 

 become of more direct concern to the people of the United States is 

 our territorial expansion. We now have the Hawaiian Islands, the 

 Philippines, Guam, Porto Rico and the Canal Zone. In these posses- 

 sions many of the insect-borne diseases which do not occur within the 

 United States proper are known to exist. Military and commercial 

 interests cause intimate intercourse between this country and the 

 outlying possessions. This naturally has the effect of greatly increas- 

 ing the importance of full knowledge regarding any insects which may 

 transmit these diseases if they become introduced. 



However, the great importance of insects concerned in the trans- 

 mission of disease, from the American standpoint, is not connected 

 with tropical maladies which may be introduced and become epidemic 

 here, but with a number of important endemic diseases. In the case 

 of man we have malaria, dengue, spotted fever, a form of ophthalmia^ 



