"MOSQUITO BRIGADES" 



273 



generally occupied by Culex, such as broken bottles, 

 old tins, pots, and calabashes, and barrels, whatever 

 will hold water — all the debris and broken rubbish 

 round huts or houses. In all these places, Ano- 

 pheles eggs or larvae are found ; and, with practice, 

 it is easy to detect them. Of course, it is not easy 

 to wage war against the adult mosquito : the work 

 is, Venienti occurrere morbo, to organise gangs of 

 workmen, or of prison labour, and "mosquito 

 brigades " ; to clear the ground of cartloads of 

 old biscuit-tins, broken gin-bottles, and other dust- 

 heap things, in and around the place ; to cover- 

 in the cisterns, rain-barrels, and wells ; to clean 

 pools and duck-ponds of weed, and stock them 

 with minnows ; to put a film of kerosene to the 

 puddles, or sweep them out, or fill them up and 

 turf them over ; everywhere, to drain, and level, 

 and clean-up the surface soil ; and everywhere, by 

 these and the like methods, to break the cycle of 

 the life of the Plasmodium malaricz : — 



" Draining and cultivation where the land will 

 repay the expenditure, permanent and complete 

 flooding where it will not, and such flooding is 

 possible ; proper paving of unhealthy towns, and 

 the filling-in of stagnant, swampy pools ; these — in 

 other words, all measures calculated to keep down 

 mosquitoes — are the more important things to be 

 striven for in attempting the sanitation of malarious 

 districts. In England, in Holland, in France, in 

 Algeria, in America, and in many other places, 

 enormous tracts of country, which formerly were 

 useless and pestilential, have been rendered healthy 

 and productive by such means." (Manson, loc. cit.) 



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