92 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [Feb., 71% 
Mosouito oR MAN? THE CONQUEST OF THE TROPICAL WoORLD.—In spite 
of all the interest aroused in the past decade on the subject of the re- 
lation of insects to disease, authoritative discussions, which, at the same 
time are thoroughly interesting for the non-technical reader, are rare. 
There has recently appeared such a book, which holds one’s interest from 
beginning to end,—Sir Rubert Boyce’s “Mosquito or Man.”* By ability 
to present the facts in a readable, popular style, no less than by a broad 
first-hand knowledge of his subject, the author, who is dean of the 
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, is peculiarly qualified. 
It is in the field of tropical medicine that the application of the dis- 
coveries of the relations of insects to the transmission of disease has 
been most far-reaching, and Sir Rubert has fittingly given his book the 
sub-title “The Conquest of the Tropical World.” After a brief dis- 
cussion of the foundation of the tropical medicine movement in Eng- 
land, he traces the growth of general and applied sanitation in the 
tropics and emphasizes that the greatest value of measures along this 
line has been in the fact that indirectly and incidentally they resulted 
in a reduction in numbers of disease-carrying insects. For instance, 
modern methods of obtaining water supplies have resulted in a great 
reduction of yellow fever throughout the West Indies in the past fifty 
years. But, “the significance of the relationship of the diminution of 
yellow fever to the introduction of pipe-borne water is due entirely to 
the fact that there has been of necessity a diminution of the common 
breeding places of the house mosquito—the Stegomyia calopus—the 
sole carrier of yellow fever.” 
An entertaining and concise account of the discoveries which under- 
lie our present knowledge of insects as carriers of disease is preceded 
by a chapter on “Miasm, Tradition and Prejudice.” As one who has 
taken part in many campaigns against disease Dr. Boyce has good rea- 
son to know the depth to which the old doctrine of the miasmatic 
origin of malaria and yellow fever is rooted.{ The popular mind is 
not yet freed from the idea of “the deadly miasm, which surrounds you 
on all sides, which you encounter at its worst in the cool eventide or 
early morning,” and even yet, in many regions, it is regarded as a mat- 
ter of course that the newcomer must fall a prey to the “acclimation 
fever.” On account of this deep-seated belief in man, the pioneer finds 
it far more easy to overthrow the strongholds of the disease-carrying 
* Mosquito or Man? The Conquest of the Tropical World. By Sir 
Rubert Boyce, M.B., F.R.S. London, 1909. John Murray. $3.50. 
+ One of our best dictionaries in its revised, 1909 edition, defines ma- 
laria as a fever produced by “morbific exhalations arising from swamps 
or effluvia from the decomposition of animal or vegetable matter.” 
