ALGERIAN WORK 439 
had been stationed there between the 1st of July, 1894, and the 1st of 
December, 1901. All of them were seriously ill with malaria, and the first eight 
left their positions on account of malarial fever by the advice of their physicians. 
The ninth was the man in charge at the time, who was very thoroughly infected. 
The families of these agents, concerning which there were no statistics, were all 
and always feverish, according to the best information. It seems that there did 
not exist a person who had ever lived in this station a single summer without 
contracting malaria. At the time when the work began, 26th of June, 1902, there 
were thirteen people living in the station; among them nine had been there a 
year or more and were malarious; four had arrived during the winter and had 
never had malaria. In the neighborhood of the station there were two families, 
one of Arabs and one of French. All members of these two families were 
malarious and refused to be protected, and therefore constituted a constant 
source of infection for the Anopheles. It was the same way with the travelers 
who came to the station to wait for trains leaving in the evening or at night. 
Most of them were Arabs coming from nearby places notoriously unhealthy. 
The conditions of the problem, then, were severe. It was necessary to protect 
from the bite of infected Anopheles four persons not previously exposed, and 
nine others already malarious, the latter from reinfection. The measures under- 
taken were to protect this group of people from adult Anopheles and to destroy 
the Anopheles larve. This was done in the usual way. The openings to the 
building, doors, windows and chimney, were screened. Breeding-places were 
searched for and all found were treated with kerosene. On leaving the station 
at night, veils and gloves were used, but in spite of this watchfulness it was not 
certain that all of the inmates invariably observed this precaution. The 
results were excellent. The numbers of the mosquitoes were greatly reduced by 
the work against the early stages; the building was almost entirely protected— 
so much so that but nine Anopheles succeeded in gaining entrance. At the end of 
the season not one of the four new people had shown the slightest symptom of 
malaria, a condition which it is safe to say had not occurred before in that 
locality, and the others, although having some fever, showed no indication of 
reinfection. 
This was only an initial experiment, to prove what could be done, and the 
results were placed before the Governor-General of Algeria and the members of 
Congress as well as the departmental and communal authorities. The expenses 
incurred amounted to 304.80 francs. The governmental efforts since that time 
seem to have been very considerable. In 1904 malaria was pandemic in Algeria, 
but through increased knowledge and extended repressive measures, as the report 
for 1908 shows, the situation in that year was very much better than in 1904. 
The work included conducting demonstrations to instruct the people, in widen- 
ing each year the territory covered, and in organizing anti-malarial campaigns 
in different localities by the physicians, engineers, etc., stationed in those 
localities. Propagandic work of all kinds is going on, including placards in the 
railway carriages and elsewhere, and teaching anti-malarial measures in all the 
schools. Later reports indicate an awakening of the country that can not fail to 
be productive of great good. 
