LOCAL DECREASE OF MALARIA 237 
its disappearance in that country had been due entirely to the improved drainage 
of the marshes or fens. It is comparatively recently that the marshy and fen 
districts have lost their malarious reputation. At present, however, cases of 
endemic malaria appear to be unknown in England, although sporadic cases are 
met with rarely. 
The early conditions in certain of the United States were very similar, and 
the improved conditions are due to the same cause. In the great agricultural 
middle western States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, 
where malaria played such great havoc during their settlement through more 
than the first half of the nineteenth century, there were great areas of swamp 
land, and it is in those states that swamp reclamation as a whole has been 
carried out on the largest scale. At the present time these great areas, once 
breeders of Anopheles in extraordinary numbers, constitute the most fertile and 
productive land in the whole region. How recently and how rapidly the change 
has come about is indicated, for one locality in Michigan, by Jordan and 
Hefferan (loc. cit.), and may be quoted: 
“A. The Locality The observations were made in and about the village of 
Eastmanville, in western Michigan, during the summers of 1902, 1903 and 1904. 
A white settlement has existed at this point, upon the north bank of the Grand 
River, twenty miles (river measurement) from its debouchement into Lake 
Michigan, since about 1840. Prior to that date, and for some time afterward, 
Indians of the Ottawa and Pottawatomie tribes had villages near this part of 
the river. The population of the village, never more than a few hundreds, is at 
present about 150. 
“The soil of the district is clay, covered by a few feet of sand for the most 
part, but occasionally cropping out. The country-side is almost entirely under 
cultivation or in pasture land ; little or nothing remains of the marshes or of the 
heavy timber which formerly covered the area. The north bank of the river, 
upon which the village lies, rises with somewhat more marked declivity than the 
south, which is sandy, the channel being here, for two miles, on the north shore. 
The stream is at this point thirty rods wide; the vegetation of the shores is 
characterized by low willows and wild rice. North from the river run several 
ravines, dry in summer except for occasional spring-fed pools. Opposite the 
village, and separated from the river by a strip fifteen rods wide, part sand and 
part marshland, is a deep currentless bayou, mud-bottomed, spring-fed, ten rods 
wide and two miles long. With the exception of a few rods, its shores are 
timbered ; the vegetation is that of a spring-fed lake. 
“B. Malarial History—tThis part of Michigan was in earlier times, accord- 
ing to tradition, one of the worst malarial districts in a highly malarial state. 
No records except the general State Reports for western Michigan are available 
to show the former prevalence of malaria in Eastmanville, but the testimony of 
all the older settlers is unanimous. Everyone in the district was a sufferer, and 
everyone who came to the district expected to contract the disease. From the 
strongest of the laboring men to the infant born on the mother’s ague day, the 
entire population was subject to chills and fever. 
“ Such conditions do not now exist. The Michigan State Board of Health 
Reports contain interesting statistics regarding the decrease of malaria in Michi- 
gan during twenty-three years: 
