1904.] L. Rogers — Special Report on Fever in Dinajpur Dist, 53 



marked effects were got by treating all the children in a syce line in 

 this way, malaria being nearly absent from both the children and the 

 adults. Further, the moving of some syces from their old lines near 

 the canals to one-half a mile or more from them resulted in an entire 

 absence of both the anopheles and of malaria fever among them. 

 That the total destruction of the malaria-bearing mosquitoes will 

 prevent the fever is certain, but experience in India has proved that 

 it is only very exceptionally favourable conditions that this measure is 

 practical, while it must be continued indefinitely. Such conditions 

 were met with at Ismalia, where rain falls on but very few days of the 

 year, and certain swamps and pools were easily permanently filled up. 

 Here the resulting reduction of malaria has been most marked, but to 

 attempt to apply this method to the totally different conditions of 

 Lower Bengal and to expect similar results would be utter folly. 



In view of the above facts, let us return to the conditions met with 

 at Dinajpur. Here we have the malaria-bearing A. Listoni breeding 

 throughout the course of two streams one on either side of the town, 

 and probably also in the rainy season in the numerous subsidiary 

 streams which flow into the main one during that time. To attempt to 

 destroy the larvae in these rivers throughout the rainy season is obvi- 

 ously utterly impracticable. Something may be done by steadily ex- 

 tending year by year the brick-lined drains through the main streets, 

 so as to do away with the stagnant earth-lined drains, the bottoms of 

 which it is almost impossible to keep sufficiently level to prevent water 

 standing in them. Further within the municipal limits the formation 

 of borrel pits during road-making by the Public Works Department 

 should not be allowed, as at present, for they form excellent breeding 

 grounds in the rainy season. These measures are only applicable to the 

 town itself, and do not touch even the smallest proportion of the total 

 population of the district among whom it is quite clear, then, that 

 some other measure than mosquito destruction must be relied on. 



The Village Distribution op Quinine. 



Where it is found impossible to destroy the intermediate host of 

 the malarial parasite, namely, the malaria-carrying varieties of 

 anopheles, the only other practical method of malaria prophylaxis is 

 the destruction of the parasites during their cycle in the human sub- 

 ject. This can only be done by efficient doses of quinine, so that the 

 problem resolved itself into one of devising a practical scheme of vil- 

 lage distribution of quinine. It has already been mentioned that the 

 administration of quinine regularly as a prophylactic to the children 

 of a syce line in Mian Mir not only saved nearly the whole of them from 



