on Mosquito Extonnination. 27 



THE EXTERMINATION AND EXCLUSION OF 



MOSQUITOES FROM OUR PUBLIC 



INSTITUTIONS. 



By Prestox H. Bailhache. 



Surgeon U. S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service. 



Befoie beginning my remarks on "The Extermination 

 and Exclusion of Alosquitoes from our Public Institutions," 

 I wish to correct an error in the program issued on the 8th 

 instant, in which the name of Surgeon-General Wyman, by 

 Surgeon Preston H. Bailhache, appears to be slated to speak 

 upon "The Extermination Work of the Army Medical Corps." 

 Much credit is due to this Corps, but it would be a piece of 

 presumption on my part to even try to do justice to a subject 

 which belongs to another branch of the public service. The 

 Army Medical Corps and the Public Health and Marine Hos- 

 pital Service, of which latter Surgeon-General Wyman is the 

 Chief, are two different organizations, one under the War 

 Department and the other under the Treasury Department, 

 and while they both work on the same lines so far as public 

 health is concerned, it would hardly be proper for me to speak 

 on the subject indicated on the program. 



In regard to the subject I have selected, "The Extermina- 

 tion and Exclusion of Mosquitoes from Public Institutions," 

 I may be permitted to say that, so long ago as the summer 

 of 1897, Passed Assistant Surgeon A. C. Smith, an officer 

 of the then Marine Hospital Service (now the Public Health 

 and Marine Hospital Service), accepted the idea of Dr. Finlay, 

 of Havana, Cuba, regarding the dissemination of yellow fever 

 by the bites of mosquitoes, and after screening all the windows 

 and doors at the National Quarantine Station on Ship Island, 

 Gulf of Mexico, no case of }'ellow fever developed at the 

 station, although he treated some thirty cases of the disease 

 brought there by infected vessels. I may add, while speaking 

 of yellow fever, that the Pasteur Institute Commission, now 

 in session in Paris, France, has absolutely settled upon the 

 mosquito as the sole agent in the dissemination of yellow fever. 



I believe it is now accepted by all persons familiar with the 

 subject, that malarial fevers are disseminated by a certain 

 genus mosquito, not the yellow fever mosquito, Stegomyia 

 Fasciata, nor the ordinary mosquito of the genus Culex, which, 



