ECONOMIC LOSS FROM MOSQUITOES. 
LOSS FROM MALARIA. 
The senior author, in a publication of the U. 8. Department of Agriculture 
entitled “ Economic loss to the people of the United States through insects that 
carry disease,” has discussed the effect of malaria as follows: 
“ The west coast of Africa, portions of India, and many other tropical regions 
have always, at least down to the present period, been practically uninhabitable 
by civilized man, owing to the presence of pernicious malaria. The industrial 
and agricultural development of Italy has been hindered to an incalculable 
degree by the prevalence of malaria in the southern half of the Italian peninsula, 
as well as in the valley of the Po and elsewhere. The introduction and spread of 
malaria in Greece is stated by Ronald Ross, and with strong reasons, to have 
been largely responsible for the progressive physical degeneration of one of the 
strongest races of the earth. 
“In the United States, malaria, if not endemic, was early introduced. The 
probabilities are that it was endemic, and it is supposed that the cause of the 
failure of the early colonies in Virginia was due to this disease. It is certain 
that malaria retarded in a marked degree the advance of civilization over the 
North American continent, and particularly was this the case in the march of 
the pioneers throughout the Middle West and throughout the Gulf States west to 
the Mississippi and beyond. In many large regions once malarious the disease 
has lessened greatly in frequency and virulence owing to the reclamation of 
swamp areas and the lessening of the number of the possible breeding places of 
the malarial mosquitoes, but the disease is still enormously prevalent, particu- 
larly so in the southern United States. There are many communities and many 
regions in the North where malaria is unknown, but in many of these localities 
and throughout many of these regions Anopheles mosquitoes breed, and the 
absence of malaria means simply that malarial patients have not entered these 
regions at the proper time of the year to produce a spread of the malady. It has 
happened again and again that in communities where malaria was previously un- 
known it has suddenly made its appearance and spread in a startling manner. 
These cases are to be explained, as happened in Brookline, Mass., by the intro- 
duction of Italian laborers, some of whom were malarious, to work upon the 
reservoir; or, as happened at a fashionable summer resort near New York City, 
by the appearance of a coachman who had had malaria elsewhere and had re- 
lapsed at this place. In such ways, with a rapidly increasing population, malaria 
is still spreading in this country. 
“To attempt an estimate of the economic loss from the prevalence of malaria 
in the United States is to attempt a most difficult task. Prof. Irving Fisher, in 
one of his papers before the recent International Tuberculosis Congress, declared 
that tuberculosis costs the people of the United States more than a billion dollars 
each year. In this estimate Professor Fisher considered the death rate for con- 
sumption, the loss of the earning capacity of the patients, the period of in- 
validism, and the amount of money expended in the care of the sick, together 
with other factors. In making these estimates he had a much more definite basis 
than can be gained for malaria. The death rate from malaria (as malaria) is 
comparatively small and is apparently decreasing. Exact figures for the whole 
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