SECTION B PREVENTIVE MEDICINE 



(Hall 13, September 21,3 p. m.) 



CHAIRMAN: DR. JOSEPH M. MATHEWS, President of the State Board of Health, 



Louisville, Kentucky. 

 SPEAKER: PROFESSOR RONALD Ross, F. R. S., School of Tropical Medicine, 



University College, Liverpool. 

 SECRETARY: DR. J. N. HURTY, Indianapolis. 



THE LOGICAL BASIS OF THE SANITARY POLICY OF 

 MOSQUITO-REDUCTION 



BY RONALD ROSS 



[Ronald Ross, Professor of Tropical Medicine, University of Liverpool, b. May 

 13, 1857, Almora, India. D.Sc. Trinity College, Dublin, 1904. Post-graduate, 

 Bacteriology, under Klein, London, 1889; Diploma, Public Health, United 

 Colleges, London, 1888; Surgeon, afterwards Major, Indian Medical Service, 

 retired since 1899. Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, England; 

 Fellow of the Royal Society, London; Companion of the Order of the Bath; 

 Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons; Nobel Medical Prize. Author of 

 works and papers on malarial and tropical diseases; and Algebra of Space 

 (Geometry).] 



THE great science of preventive medicine is often called upon to 

 consider new policies of public sanitation, which, whether they 

 ultimately prove successful or not, are always of profound interest 

 and importance to mankind. Quite recently a new measure of this 

 kind has been proposed, which in the opinion of many promises to 

 rank with house-sanitation and preventive inoculation as a means 

 of saving human life on a large scale. Unfortunately, its value has not 

 yet been clearly demonstrated with the result that it is not being 

 employed as largely as some of us hoped would be the case. I feel, 

 therefore, that I cannot better acknowledge the honor you have 

 done me in inviting me to address you to-day than by attempting 

 to discuss this important theme in the hope that the discussion 

 may prove profitable to the cause of public health. The new sani- 

 tary policy to which I refer is that which aims at the reduction of 

 disease-bearing insects, especially those which are the disseminating 

 agents of malaria, yellow fever, and filariasis. 



I presume that it is scarcely necessary to discuss the evidence 

 which has established the connection between various insects and 

 arthropods and many diseases of man and of animals. The fact that 

 the pathogenetic parasites which produce those great scourges of the 

 tropics just mentioned are carried by gnats is now too well known 

 to require reiteration. It is necessary only to remind you that the 



