February, '13] HUNTER: MEDICAL ENTOMOLOGY 37 



Extent of Present Work on Medical Entomology in the 

 United States 



We now come to the question of how extensively entomologists in 

 this country have occupied the field of medical entomology. The 

 present membership of this Association is 359. Perhaps a score out 

 of this number, that is, 5 per cent, are more or less concerned with 

 medical entomology. This number includes those who teach medical 

 entomology in connection with other branches of the subject, as well 

 as others who have administrative work on many species affecting 

 agricultural products and minor projects connected with disease 

 transmitting species. In all probability the time put in on the subject 

 by all entomologists in this country who have anything whatever to do 

 with the medical side of entomology would not be more than equiva- 

 lent to the full time of ten members, or 2 per cent of the Association. 

 We shall consider, however, that an equivalent of full time of 5 per 

 cent of the membership is engaged in this way. It has been pointed 

 out that the losses to the people of the United States caused by insects 

 aggregate at least one half of the losses to agricultural products. On 

 this basis, if entomologists covered the field of medical entomology as 

 thoroughly as they do that of agricultural entomology in this country, 

 there would be 169 engaged altogether in that line of work. Out of 

 154 projects included in the report of the committee on entomological 

 investigations, only eight deal in any sense with medical entomology. 

 These are distributed over only six states, one of them having two 

 projects of the kind and each of the others one. Could there be a 

 more striking illustration of the neglect of our opportunities? 



There is one point the writer desires to make in order to obviate a 

 possible misconstruction of his position. We have compared medical 

 and agricultural entomology and have contrasted the amount of work 

 in each field which is now under way in this country. Much as we 

 urge the necessity of more work in medical entomology, we do not 

 desire to see it undertaken at the cost of a reduction in the work on 

 agricultural entomology. Possibly there are a few cases in which the 

 work on agricultural pests might be curtailed, as, for instance, where 

 stations in neighboring states have similar projects on the same species, 

 but the writer believes in the idea expressed repeatedly by the lamented 

 Dr. John B. Smith, that many men with their different viewpoints 

 might well be employed on the same project, and that there is hardly 

 such a thing as useless duplication in entomological problems. More- 

 over, one discovery opens new fields. Coquillett's work on cyanogen 

 did not settle the question of fumigation, but led to a host of problems 

 about dosage, plant susceptibility and procedure. The devising of a 

 plan of campaign against a pest leads to the necessity of demonstrations 



