INSECTS AND HUMAN DISEASE 93 



ing mankind together." Sir Ronald Ross says : " Malaria 

 fever is important, not only because of the misery which it 

 inflicts upon mankind, but because of the serious opposition 

 which it has always given to the march of civilisation in 

 the tropics. Unlike many diseases, it is essentially endemic, 

 a local malady, and one which unfortunately haunts more 

 especially the fertile, well- watered, and luxuriant tracts 

 precisely those which are of the greatest value to man. 

 There it strikes down not only the indigenous barbaric 

 population, but, with still greater certainty, the pioneers of 

 civilisation the planter, the trader, the missionary, and 

 the soldier. It is therefore the principal and gigantic ally 

 of Barbarism. No wild deserts, no savage races, no geo- 

 graphical difficulties have proved so inimical to civilisation 

 as this disease. We ma} 7 also say that it has withheld an 

 entire continent from humanity the immense and fertile 

 tracts of Africa. What we call the Dark Continent should 

 be called the Malarious Continent ; and for centuries the 

 successive waves of civilisation which have flooded and 

 fertilised Europe and America have broken themselves in 

 vain upon its deadly shores." Creighton, in the Encyclo- 

 paedia Britannica, says that malaria " has been estimated 

 to produce half the entire mortality of the human race." 

 The disease has devastated Mauritius and Reunion. 



Turning from the tropics to Europe, we find that the 

 industrial and agricultural development of Italy is hindered 

 by the presence of malaria in the southern half of the 

 peninsula and in the Po valley; and, in 1900, owing to 

 this disease, five million acres of Italian agricultural land 

 remained very imperfectly cultivated. The depopulation 

 of the Roman Campagna, too, was probably due to the 

 sudden introduction of malaria by the mercenaries of 

 Scylla and Marius. 



Greece, too, has paid its tribute to the ubiquitous 

 mosquito, and, in this respect, we cannot do better than 

 quote from Sir Ronald Ross's address on malaria in Greece, 



