Proceedings of Seventh Annual Meeting 113 



more interest to the child because the facts are easily ascertained 

 and the material is to be had without expense. I need only refer 

 to the excellent book on "Insects and Disease," by Prof. R. W. 

 Doane, and the larger work by Riley and Johanson, as an illustration 

 of the ease with which an apparently complex scientific question can 

 be made one of interest to the growing child. But of particular 

 value for teaching purposes is the bulletin on "Insects and Disease," 

 by Winslow and Lutz, issued by the American Museum of Natural 

 History, which is amplified by a more scientific dissertation on the 

 collecting and preserving of insects, by the United States National 

 Museum. If the war against preventable disease is ever to be 

 brought measurably nearer to a victory worth while, it must rest 

 upon a clear understanding on the part of the child in the new 

 generation, that a considerable proportion of the diseases that 

 threaten life are insect-borne, are transmissible, and happily largely 

 within the control of human intelligence. It is therefore to be hoped 

 that the opportunity will not be missed in connection with such a 

 national convention or conference as is proposed, to bring home to 

 the public at large the truly enormous educational aspects of the 

 problem. 



Last summer, during a visit to England, I had occasion briefly to 

 consider what has been done by the War Office and Local Govern- 

 ment Board with reference to the control of malaria, which had been 

 introduced by the returning soldiers infected in the war area of 

 Macedonia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and even northern France and 

 Belgium. The Local Government Board has issued two admirable 

 reports on malaria contracted in England in 191 7 and 191 8, which, 

 though concerned with only a relatively small number of cases, 

 emphasize the importance which the British Government attaches to 

 the earliest possible measures of disease control. Not one of our 

 states can be said to measure up to the British standard of vigilance 

 in a matter where care and precaution is in very truth the price of 

 life and death. According to the report on malaria for 1918: 



The total number of locally contracted cases notified, or discovered by spec- 

 ial enquiry, since September, 1917, now amounts to 330, of which 38 were in 

 the Navy, 224 in the Army, and 68 in the civil population. It is believed that 

 231 of the cases were contracted in 1917, and 99 in 1918, but, if the experience 

 of last year is repeated, the latter figure will be increased by the detection this 

 year of some patients in whom an infection contracted last autumn has re- 

 mained "latent" during the winter. Several such cases came to notice in 1918 



