10 



LOSS THROUGH INSECTS THAT CARRY DISEASE. 



by States is available only for the following registration States: 

 California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Indiana, 

 Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New 

 Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and 

 Vermont, all of which are Northern States. For these States the 

 census reports from 1900 to 1907, inclusive, give the following death 

 rates : 



Table I. — Deaths due to malaria in the registration States, 1900-1907. 



Estimating, from the preceding table, the average annual death 

 rate due to malaria at 4.8 per 100,000 population, and considering 

 that the registration area includes only 16 of the Northern States 

 (assuming fairly, however, that the death rate in the other Northern 

 States is the same) , it seems reasonably safe to conclude that the death 

 rate from malaria for the whole United States must surely amount 

 to 15 per 100,000. It is j)robably greater than this, since the statistics 

 from the South are city statistics, and malaria is really a country 

 disease. Thus it is undoubtedly safe to assume that the death rate 

 for the whole population of the United States is in the neighborhood 

 of 15 per 100,000. This would give an annual death rate from 

 malaria of nearly 12,000 and a total number of deaths for the 8-year 

 period 1900-1907 of approximately 96,000. 



But with malaria perhaps as with no other disease does the death 

 rate fail to indicate the real loss from the economic point of view. A 

 man may suffer from malaria throughout the greater part of his life, 

 and his productive capacity may be reduced from 50 to 75 per cent, 

 and yet ultimately he may die from some entirely different immediate 

 cause. In fact, the predisposition to death from other causes brought 

 about by malaria is .so marked that if, in the collection of vital statis- 

 tics, it were possible to ascribe the real influence upon mortality that 

 malaria possesses, this disease would have a very high rank in mor- 

 tality tables. Writing of tropical countries, Sir Patrick Manson 

 declares that malaria causes more deaths, and more predisposition to 

 death by inducing cachectic states predisposing to other affections, 

 than all the other parasites affecting mankind together. Moreover, 

 it has been shown that the average life of the worker in malarious 



