CHAPTER V 

 MALARIA AND MOSQUITOES 



ONE of the romances of science is that of the 

 discovery of mosquito-borne malaria. India 

 and Africa more particularly have suffered from the 

 malarial scourge, and the commercial progress of the 

 world has been held back for many years because 

 the ubiquitous mosquitoes, small and insignificant 

 as they are, proved too great an enemy, and stopped 

 the cutting of the Panama Canal. Not that the 

 originators of the canal scheme understood that their 

 work was to be brought to nought by the agency of 

 small insects ! Far from it. They ascribed the suc- 

 cession of deaths among their employees to the mists 

 that rose in the evening, to the odours arising from 

 the mangrove-fringed pools and stream-sides, to the 

 attacks of the chigoes and other irritating objects, to 

 the heat of the sun; in fact, to almost any cause 

 other than the real one the germs carried by the 

 bites of the mosquitoes. 



Nor were the victims of the mosquitoes along the 

 shores of the "great ditch" between the Atlantic 

 and Pacific the only ones. True, they learned by 

 bitter experience to try to live in the higher regions 



