108 PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL WORK AGAINST MOSQUITOES. 



house at night be captured and placed in the tubes. In the collec- 

 tion were found many Anopheles. These were particularly numerous 

 in tubes coming from a small group of houses. In one of the latter 

 was found a family consisting of five persons, all of whom showed the 

 acute or chronic form of malaria. Doctor Doty himself secured live 

 mosquitoes from the interior of this house. On the first evening 5 

 were captured, and all but one were Anopheles. On the second 

 evening 22 were collected, and of these more than one-half were 

 Anopheles. In a house on the opposite corner was found a patient 

 suffering from an acute attack. 



In the beginning considerable difficulty was found in detecting the 

 breeding places of the Anopheles, but this became easier as the in- 

 spections became more thorough. For instance, in a group of two 

 or three houses close together, a number of Anopheles were captured, 

 but their breeding place could not be found for some time. Finally, 

 in the backyard of one of the houses, overgrown with weeds, was 

 discovered a very large metal receptacle rilled with Anopheles larvsB 

 and with many adults in the immediate vicinity. This receptacle 

 was almost entirely covered by underbrush. 



After this experience the men employed learned to make the 

 closest possible search and to find probably every breeding place. 



The island was then divided into small districts, which were visited 

 by a mosquito corps consisting of five men, one of whom was a 

 sanitary police officer connected with the New York City depart- 

 ment of health. The equipment of the mosquito corps consisted of a 

 large wagon provided with spades, rakes, hoes, scythes, and petroleum 

 oil. A house-to-house inspection was made in each district. House 

 owners or tenants were required to remove from about the premises 

 all receptacles which might act as breeding places, or to protect them. 

 Rain-water barrels and cisterns were covered with wire netting, all 

 roof gutters were repaired, and pools of water were covered with 

 petroleum. In certain instances orders were sent to the owners of 

 property containing depressions in the soil to fill them or drain them. 

 If these orders could not be enforced, the mosquito corps returned 

 every ten days or two weeks and applied more petroleum. Copies of 

 a circular of information were delivered so far as possible to each 

 house on Staten Island by police officers, and this educational cam- 

 paign brought about valuable cooperation on the part of the public. 



In 1905 the details of this work were presented to the department 

 of health of the city of New York, and the city government granted 

 an appropriation for the drainage of the swamp land along the 

 entire coast of the island. With the aid of this appropriation, ditch- 

 ing was carried on somewhat in the same manner in which it has been 

 carried on in New Jersey. Down to the present time between 800 

 and 1,000 miles of ditches have been dug. The swarms of mos- 



