Malaria Eradication and Mosquito Control 



Frederick L. Hoffman, LL.D. 



Third Vice-Presideni, Prudential Insurance Company of America, 



Newmk, N. J. 



I have been much interested in the suggestion by Dr. Headlee 

 relative to a national convention on mosquito extermination and con- 

 trol, more so in view of the by no means encouraging results of the 

 efforts of the National Committee on Malaria, which has been work- 

 ing along somewhat similar lines. The outlook, however, is much 

 more encouraging in the case of mosquito extermination since the 

 results not only concern comfort and health, but also profoundly 

 concern the economic wellbeing of the community. Cause and effect 

 in mosquito extermination are so much more closely related than in 

 malaria eradication that it is usually less difficult to maintain a 

 sustained interest on the part of the community. I therefore hope 

 that such a convention will be called, but that it will combine efforts 

 toward both mosquito extermination and malaria eradication, and 

 that there may be allied to it the scientific work of the malaria com- 

 mittee, possibly through the cooperation of the Southern Medical 

 Association. 



The public is unquestionably more directly concerned with matters 

 of comfort than of health ; with matters which concern the wealth- 

 producing energies of the country than with those which conserve 

 the underlying physical strength and wellbeing of the people. But 

 it requires no extended argument to prove that you can not advance 

 the interests of the community in the direction of a diminished 

 mosquito frequency without at the same time diminishing the inci- 

 dence of malaria in a mild or serious form, as the case may be. An 

 excellent illustration is Southwest Missouri, wherein immense drain- 

 age operations have brought about a veritable revolution from an 

 apparently hopeless condition of primitive life to one that will com- 

 pare favorably with the attained civilization of older and longer 

 settled communities. Southwest Missouri, a few years ago, had a 

 malaria death rate as high as the West Coast of Africa, but the 

 drainage of that section has already effected a material reduction in 

 malaria frequency, with a fair promise that, in the not far distant 

 future, the disease will be reduced to practically negligible propor- 

 tions. 



Ill 



