ECONOMIC LOSS THROUGH INSECTS 



741 



50,000 francs ($9,650), and the annual 

 expanses since have amounted to about 

 18,300 francs ($3,532). 



The results may be summarized about 

 as follows : Since the beginning of 1903 

 the ordinary mosquitoes have disap- 

 peared from Ismailia. Since the autumn 

 of 1903 not a single larva of Anopheles 

 has been found in the protected zone, 

 which extends to the west for a distance 

 of 1,000 meters from the first houses in 

 the Arabian quarter and to the east for a 

 distance of 1,800 meters from the first 

 houses in the European quarter. After 

 1902 malarial fever obviously began to 

 decrease, and since 1903 not a single 

 new case of malaria has been found in 

 Ismailia. 



A very efficient piece of antimalarial 

 work was accomplished in Havana dur- 

 ing the American occupation of 1901 to 

 1902, incidental in a way to the work 

 against yellow fever. An Anopheles bri- 

 gade of workmen was organized under 

 the sanitary officer, Doctor Gorgas, for 

 work along the small streams, irrigated 

 gardens, and similar places in the 

 suburbs, and numbered from 50 to 300 

 men. No extensive drainage, such as 

 would require engineering skill, was at- 

 tempted, and the natural streams and 

 gutters were simply cleared of obstruc- 

 tions and grass, while superficial ditches 

 were made through the irrigated 

 meadows. 



Among the suburban truck gardens 

 Anopheles bred everywhere, in the little 

 puddles of water, cow tracks, horse 

 tracks, and similar depressions in grassy 

 ground. Little or no oil was used by the 

 Anopheles brigade, since it was found in 

 practice a simple matter to drain these 

 places. At the end of the year it was 

 very difficult to find water containing 

 mosquito larvae anywhere in the suburbs, 

 and the effect upon malarial statistics 

 was striking. 



In 1900, the year before the beginning 

 of the mosquito work, there were 325 

 deaths from malaria; in 1901, the first 

 year of the mosquito work, 171 deaths; 

 in 1902, the second year of mosquito 

 work, 77 deaths. Since 1902 there has 



been a gradual though slower decrease, 

 as follows: 1903, 51 ; 1904, 44; 1905, 32; 

 1906, 26; 1907, 23. These results, al- 

 though less striking than those from 

 Ismailia, involved a smaller expense in 

 money and show surely an annual saving 

 of 300 lives, and undoubtedly a corre- 

 sponding decrease in the number of. ma- 

 larial cases, which may be estimated upon 

 our earlier basis at something less than 

 40,000. 



THE YELLOW FEVER MOSQUITO UNDER 

 CONTROL 



Since the discovery by the American 

 army surgeons that yellow fever is car- 

 ried by a mosquito, the Stegomyia euto- 

 pics, the disease has been driven out of 

 United States territory. 



In what is termed the New Orleans 

 epidemic of 1905 a striking illustration of 

 the value of this recently acquired 

 mosquito-transmission knowledge is seen. 

 The presence of yellow fever in the city 

 was first recognized about the 1st of 

 July, but it was the 12th of August be- 

 fore the Public Health and Marine- 

 Hospital Service was put in complete 

 control of the situation. By that time 

 the increase in new cases and deaths ren- 

 dered it practically certain that the dis- 

 ease was as widespread as during the 

 terrible epidemic of 1878. There had 

 been up to that date 142 deaths from a 

 total of 913 cases, as against 152 deaths 

 from a total of 519 cases in 1878. The 

 Public Health and Marine-Hospital Ser- 

 vice, under Doctor White, took hold of 

 the situation with energv, basing its 

 measures almost entirely upon a warfare 

 against Stegomyia calopus. The disease 

 began almost immediately to abate, and 

 the result at the close of the season indi- 

 cated 460 deaths, as against 4,046 in 

 1878, a virtual saving of over 3,500 lives. 



WORK ON THE ISTHMUS OE PANAMA 



The United States Government has 

 very properly used the services of Colonel 

 Gorgas, who was in charge of the emi- 

 nently successful work at Havana, by 

 appointing him chief sanitary officer of 

 the Canal Zone during the digging of the 



