Efforts at Mosquito Control in Different Parts of the World 



L. O. Howard 



Chief, Bureau of Entomology, United States Department of 



Agriculture 



More than sixteen years ago the first general convention to con- 

 sider the questions involved in mosquito extermination was held in 

 New York City. The secretary of the convention, the late Henry 

 Clay Weeks, who later became familiarly known as "Mosquito 

 Weeks," asked me to present at the meeting a paper entitled ''The 

 World-Wide Crusade." A congressional committee called me on 

 the day of the meeting, and I was unable to be present, but I sent a 

 letter which was read and afterwards published in the proceedings, 

 in which I attempted to justify the title selected by Mr. Weeks, not 

 only on the ground of the anti-mosquito work which had already 

 been done at that early date, but by the work which I readily fore- 

 saw would be done in the years to come and in practically all parts 

 of the world. I pointed out in my letter especially the work done in 

 the English colonies, in Italy, in Japan, in Cuba, in Mexico, and in 

 Hawaii. I did not mention the extremely interesting and important 

 work that was done during the years 1899 to 1902 on the island of 

 Brioni, Istria, since I knew of this work in its detail only years 

 later when I heard Doctor Rivas tell the story before the American 

 Society of Tropical Medicine. 



I did point out in this letter, and I have done it several times 

 since, that anti-mosquito work was taken up in other parts of the 

 world solely from the public-health point of view, and from that 

 time down to very recently it is undoubtedly true that the United 

 States lagged far behind other portions of the world in its work 

 against mosquitoes with the public health as the prime incentive. 

 It is true that our operations in Cuba and Panama were carried on 

 upon a very large scale and very successfully, distinctly with the 

 matter of health in mind, and that work of this character was also 

 done, although on a very much smaller scale, and also with the 

 health incentive, in Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines ; but in 

 the United States proper, although an enormous amount of anli- 

 mosquito work was carried on, health was not the prime impulse 

 nor were the malaria-carrying mosquitoes the ones particularly 

 aimed at, until we entered the great war. It is true that Doctor 

 Doty, in his- excellent work on Staten Island while he was Health 



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