6 Proceedings oi^ Ninth Annual Meeting 



buried at sea off the Bahamas, a useless waste of a splendid life. 

 My grandmother, after months of waiting, learned of his death, 

 which broke her heart. She pined away, dying three years later, 

 leaving five little children ranging from 4 to 13 years of age. 

 They were well brought up and educated by their uncles and 

 aunts, but these children were robbed by that mosquito of the 

 loving precepts of a father and the tender care of a mother, of 

 which nothing, however gracious, can take the place. My grand- 

 father died among strangers with no' loving face near him, viewed 

 by all the crew and passengers as a deadly menace, and justly so. 

 He will lie in the ooze of the tropical ocean bed until the last 

 trumpet sounds and the sea gives up its dead. Slain by a mos- 

 quito ! The palliation for this personal reference is, that I speak 

 of a case of which I have personal knowledge. 



Now the economic loss to the state in the loss of a human life 

 is much greater than it seems at first glance. Suppose my grand- 

 father's earning capacity, that is his producing capacity, which 

 adds to the wealth of the state, had been only $25.00 per week, 

 which is putting it very low, or $1,200.00 per year. If he had 

 reached the scriptural age of four-score years and ten, he would 

 have had normally thirty years of activity. There is every reason 

 to believe he would, for he came of a family in which longevity 

 was a fixed habit. Twelve hundred dollars per year for 30 years 

 means that his death caused a loss of $36,000.00. His wife, in 

 keeping her family, in the economic sense, would have earned as 

 much had she lived. This means, therefore, a loss of $72,000.00 

 to the state. Multiply the value of the loss of this one life by 

 the thousands of lives that have been lost as a result of infection 

 with disease by mosquitos, and it only takes a few moments to 

 see what fabulous sums of money this enemy of mankind has 

 •cost the state. 



In 1914 in the State of New Jersey there were 771 cases of 

 malaria. We now know that these were caused by inoculation by 

 the Anopheles, the malaria-carrying mosquito. As the average 

 period of incapacitation is two months, this means in each case 

 $200.00 of wealth-producing effort lost. It not only means that, 

 but at least half as much again in the expense of medicines, 

 nurses and physicians, or $300.00', which is a very low estimate. 

 Multiply this cost by the number of cases and you find that the 

 economic loss from malaria alone was over $231,000.00' for that 

 one year. Multiply this by the years that have gone before and 

 you will find the economic loss runs into many millions — ^millions 

 that would have been added to the permanent wealth of the state. 



