CHAPTER IX 

 MALARIA 



Importance. — Of all human diseases there is none which is of 

 more importance in the world today than malaria, and this in 

 spite of the fact that we have a very full knowledge of its cause, 

 the manner of its spread, its cure, and means of prevention. It 

 has been estimated to be the direct or indirect cause of over one- 

 half the entire mortality of the human race. Sir Ronald Ross 

 says that in India alone it is officially estimated that malaria kills 

 over one million persons a year, a greater number of deaths than 

 was caused by the great European war in the first two years of 

 its existence. When there is added to this the thousands from 

 the rest of Asia, Africa, Southern Europe, South and Central 

 America, and the southern part of our own country who are 

 annually sacrificed on the altar of the malarial parasite; the 

 millions of others who are broken in health, incapacitated for 

 work and made easy victims of other diseases; the valleys, 

 countries, and even continents which have been barred from full 

 civihzation and development by this more than by any other 

 cause; then only can we get a glimpse of the real meaning of 

 malaria to man. Ross argues convincingly that the downfall 

 of the great Greek empire and the present poverty-stricken 

 blighted condition of many parts of Greece is probably due 

 primarily to the invasion of that country, not by burning and 

 devastating armies of men, but by the malaria parasite, an in- 

 finitely more terrible though unseen foe which destroyed the new- 

 born infants, undermined the health of the children or killed 

 them outright, rendered the richest agricultural lands uninhabi- 

 table, and, in a word, sapped the vitality of the people until the 

 boasted power and glory of Greece is but a mocking memory. 



Though historians and economists have failed to recognize it, 

 the role of malaria and other endemic diseases must have played 

 an enormous part in the history of the world and in the progress 

 of nations. Malaria and its powerful accomplice, the hook- 



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