

AMERICAN MUSEUM GUIDE LEAFLETS 


When one of these mosquitoes sucks the blood of a malaria patient 
it draws in the germ which passes through its sexual stage in the 
body of the mosquito; and after a period of ten or twelve days a new 
generation of germs find their way into the salivary glands of the 
mosquito, where they lie ready to infect any new victim who may 
be bitten by the insect. 
The control of mosquito breeding, then, at last offered definite 
hope of checking this disease which had laid so heavy a burden 
upon many populous countries and some of the most fertile regions 
of the earth. 
Celli estimated that malaria caused two million cases of disease 
and 15,000 deaths a year in Italy. We have no adequate statistics of 
its ravages in the southern United States, although the importance 
of the problem has recently been forcibly set forth in an admirable 
monograph by Mr. F. L. Hoffman. 
A careful study made in Alabama in 1911 revealed 70,000 cases 
and 770 deaths in that one state and that one year. Certain counties 
in southern Missouri have experienced death rates from malaria of 
over 100, and in one instance nearly 300 per 100,000 population. 
Howard estimates the money loss due to this disease in the United 
States at $100,000,000 a year. 
During the past summer (1917) malaria was the second largest 
cause of sickness among our American troops in mobilization 
camps. 
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