Proceedings of Seventh Annual Meeting 17 



Commissioner of New York, did begin his work as a health meas- 

 ure, and in fact carried it through as a health measure, but almost 

 everywhere else the incentive was a different one. Probably no- 

 where else in the world has the motive of personal comfort entered 

 into the crusade as it has in the United States, and we have surely 

 carried this aspect of the work much farther than any other coun- 

 try. This is not to be wondered at, since, as I said in 1903, ''When 

 we consider the enormous sums of money spent in the United States 

 for luxuries, how much more should be spent for bare comfort and 

 peace !" 



With the entrance of this country into the great war, however, 

 and the establishment of cantonments in different parts of the United 

 States where large bodies of troops were assembled, mosquito work 

 from the health point of view was undertaken on a very large scale, 

 and not only were the cantonments themselves cared for under the 

 Army by men employed for this purpose, including medical men with 

 mosquito experience, sanitary engineers and entomologists, but the 

 •country around the cantonments was also cared for by the United 

 States Public Health Service, by the employment of its own officers 

 and many men in addition appointed for this specific purpose, includ- 

 ing among others several of the trained mosquito workers from New 

 Jersey. I have never been able to understand why so many of these 

 cantonments were placed in some of the most malarious and mos- 

 quito-ridden spots that could be found. There was undoubtedly 

 some good reason, and the Surgeon-General of the Army, fresh from 

 liis extraordinary success at Panama, without doubt felt that he 

 could handle malaria and the malarial mosquitoes no matter how pre- 

 valent. As a matter of fact, mosquito work around these canton- 

 ments seems to have been admirably done and a great many men 

 received much valuable experience in this direction, which will be 

 of great use to them and to different sections of the country from 

 now on.^ 



When Sir Ronald Ross published his big book "The Prevention 

 of Malaria" in 1910, he had certain chapters written by experts 

 concerning the work which at that time had been done and was being 

 done in different parts of the world, and the showing was most in- 



^It should here be stated that Hoffman pointed out in an address before the 

 Southern Medical Association early in 1917, the danger of malaria in army 

 camps and urged that the government recognize economic entomologists in 

 planning permanent camps and that entomologists should be attached to the 

 army medical service. 



