6 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Doubtless such deplorable conditions are preventable and our 

 descendants of another century will stand amazed at our blind 

 toleration of such a menace to life and happiness. 



Le: us seek to control the ordinary household pests; let us 

 recast our estimation of the house fly and the malarial mosquito 

 and gage our actions accordingly. The malevolent house fly is a 

 constant menace to the integrity of the home. Those who have 

 not suffered from disease germs introduced by this pest, should 

 recognize the danger and adopt adequate precautionary measures. 



Recent discoveries respecting the part played by insects in the 

 dissemination of malaria, yellow fever and typhoid fever, read like 

 a romance. Mosquitos as distributing agents of malaria have 

 been suspected for many years. An active impetus was given to 

 this suspicion through the discover}" by Ross that certain Indian 

 mosquitos harbored a malarial parasite affecting birds. It was 

 only a step from this to human malaria. The mosquito-malarial 

 theory took such firm hold that in 190c Drs Low and Sambon spent 

 the summer on the fever-ridden Roman campagna, relying entirely 

 for protection from malaria upon flimsy mosquito netting. Their 

 field test was further confirmed by the shipment of malarial-infected 

 mosquitos to London, where they were allowed to bite Dr Patrick 

 Manson's son, who in due time came down with the disease though 

 residing in a nonmalarious section. 



The deadly, justly dreaded " yellow jack " has likewise been 

 traced to its lair through the heroism of a few devoted scientists. 

 \" Dlunt rri's lived in a fever stricken locality with no protection 

 from infection other than the frail mosquito bar. They even 

 slept in beds soiled by fever patients for the sake of demonstrating 

 beyond question that the disease was not infectious. Drs Carroll 

 and Lazear went further and allowed themselves to be bitten by 

 infected mosquitos. Both contracted the disease, the latter losing 

 his life on the altar of scientific investigation. This was true hero- 

 ism. All honor to these martyrs. Theirs was not a useless 

 sacrifice. Before their time, a yellow fever outbreak meant 

 the loss of hundreds or thousands of lives, simply because there 

 was no known adequate method of preventing the disease. Pro- 

 longed arbitrary and wasteful quarantines were maintained. Thous- 

 ands fled from infected districts. The horrors of the shotgun 

 quarantine prevailed. The control of the yellow fever epidemic 

 of 1905 in Xew Orleans is a most striking testimony to the value 

 of the recent discoveries regarding this disease. This outbreak 

 was handled as a mosquito-borne infection and for the first time 



