Proceedings of Eighth Annual Meeting 145 



shock received at the time I first met Doctor Headlee, your dis- 

 tinguished secretary and treasurer. This meeting took place some 

 years ago while I was engaged in making a mosquito survey in Sus- 

 sex County. When I informed Doctor Headlee that we were finding 

 A. quadrimaculatus in considerable numbers and in all manner of 

 unlikely places in that mountainous region, he looked wise, and 

 calmly replied that he thought I must be mistaken, as this particular 

 genus of mosquito had hardly begun to take wing in the more south- 

 ern parts of the State and could not therefore be expected so early 

 in North Jersey. In the face of that statement, it is needless to 

 say that I began to feel very doubtful concerning my ability to iden- 

 tify one kind of mosquito from another. 



Malaria control is not so important a feature in public health 

 administration in New Jersey as it is in many parts of the United 

 States and some foreign countries. That it was at one time highly 

 important, and that it must still be reckoned with here, I shall attempt 

 to show. 



A report of the Health Commission of the State of New Jersey 

 for the year 1874 contains some exceedingly interesting information 

 on the prevalence of malaria throughout the state at that time. That 

 portion of the report devoted to "fevers" indicated that the disease 

 was widespread and that practically the entire population of some 

 communities suffered severely. It also shows that before the etiology 

 of malaria was known to science, the drainage of marsh lands was 

 recognized as a means of prevention. 



While it is true that drainage, in these early days of efforts to con- 

 trol disease, was resorted to as a means of removing so called "Mias- 

 matic" conditions, which were then believed to cause typhoid fever 

 malaria and other ills of the human body, and not primarily to pre- 

 vent mosquito breeding which in fact did result the purpose sought 

 was accomplished in a manner not then understood. Little did he 

 who wrote the 1874 report of the New Jersey Health Commission 

 realize how nearly he recorded the truth when he said : 



"Commending, and securing its virulence from some foul well or privy, or 

 drain or cellar, or from some other neglect of hygiene precautions, it passes 

 from its nest, and often wings its way to homes adjacent, which are not thus 

 contaminated." 



When this was written the malaria protozoan was not knov/n and 

 the winged insect that plays a necessary part in the life cycle of the 

 parasite and its transmission to man was not even suspected of the 



