6o Proceedings of the First Convention 



As to the combination of the two words assigned as my 

 subject, "Mosquito Engineering-," its origin is somewhat in 

 doubt. My impression is that it was first used in an article 

 by Dr. Howard, but I find it very distinctly used by a special 

 writer who has made this subject a study, in an article in the 

 New York Times about two years ago. 



If the subject be taken in a very broad sense, the term is 

 well used, but to confine it merely to getting rid of mosquitoes 

 as a pest that is a limited though highly important work for an 

 engineer. A preferable term is economic engineering, which 

 would cover all the ideas involved in extermination — such as 

 drainage of saturated areas, large or small, salt or fresh, and 

 their utilization for agricultural or residence purposes ; the 

 improvement of the living conditions of those adjacent to such 

 places, generally the poorer and more helpless class ; the in- 

 crease in the tone of life of a community by its riddance from 

 malaria ; the stoppage of the yellow fever plague with all its con- 

 sequences ; the scenic attractiveness which comes of the aboli- 

 tion of foul wet places which are generally used as dumping 

 grounds of the wastes of a community ; the reflex and the 

 direct effect of humanity to animals ; the increase of com- 

 fortable outdoor living and other results. All this is closely 

 allied to health not only in the meaning of freedom from ma- 

 laria and other diseases, but in a general way in the lessening 

 of the irritations of life on which health so greatly depends. 

 So that the sphere of mosquito engineering, or better economic 

 engineering, is very broad. It becomes a powerful aid to bet- 

 tering the conditions of life, health and the pursuit of happi- 

 ness. 



Mosquito extermination is essentially an engineering 

 problem. 



Much of the engineering of the past has been for and not 

 against the mosquito. This is true in every line of work of the 

 engineer. It is seen in road building, in railroad construction, 

 in house construction and even in landscape gardening — any- 

 where that there is a chance to form a breeding place or to 

 prevent one in the disposition of the surface of the soil. There 

 is in mind the case of a wide street filled across a low stretch 

 of land and the drain pipe under the road set six inches high 

 instead of six inches low at what should have been made the 

 outlet end. A pool was formed of necessity and an avoidable 



