FOREWORD 
This volume on Human Malaria is the 
eighth symposium in the field of public 
health published by the American Associa¬ 
tion for the Advancement of Science. The 
program for this symposium was organized 
by a joint committee from the Section on 
Medical Sciences of the Association, the 
American Society of Parasitologists, the 
American Society of Tropical Medicine and 
the National Malaria Committee. The or¬ 
ganizing committee invited the contribu¬ 
tions and made editorial revisions of the 
papers after they were presented at the 
Philadelphia meeting of the Association 
Dec. 30, 1940-Jan. 1, 1941. As the volume 
now appears, it presents a systematic, com¬ 
prehensive, authoritative and thoroughly 
documented discussion of the problems of 
human malaria in North America and the 
Caribbean region. 
Although malaria has been known from 
antiquity and is believed to have had im¬ 
portant effects on history, its cause and the 
mode of its transmission remained quite 
unknown until about fifty years ago. The 
discovery of the causative parasites in the 
blood of persons suffering from the disease 
was followed in a few years by proofs that 
the organisms live a part of their life cycle 
in Anopheles mosquitoes which transmit 
them to human beings. Immediately after 
these discoveries several great fields were 
opened for investigation—that of the dis¬ 
tribution, ecology and habits of many spe¬ 
cies and subspecies of anopheline mos¬ 
quitoes; that of the morphology, life cycle 
and physiology of several species of plas- 
modia; that of the nature and effects of 
natural and synthetic drugs in curing or 
preventing the disease; that of determining 
the seriousness of malaria as a public 
health, social and economic problem; and 
that of devising scientific locally coopera¬ 
tive, governmental, e<|onomically feasible 
and otherwise workable methods of control¬ 
ling the disease. These and related subjects 
are treated in this volume. 
It should not be assumed that the answers 
to all the questions considered in this book 
are known. If they were it might be less 
valuable than it is. It comes after an 
enormous amount of work on malaria has 
been done and when the avenues to future 
progress in its study appear to be pretty 
well understood. One of its purposes is to 
point out these promising avenues, as well 
as to present the conclusions that are well 
established. It points out, too, many al¬ 
most unexplored fields, such as the produc¬ 
tion of culture media in which to grow and 
study the parasites, the development of 
vaccines and the synthesis of prophylactic 
drugs. 
This volume is especially timely because 
of the new naval bases being constructed in 
lower latitudes by the United States Gov¬ 
ernment, and of the numerous military and 
aviation training camps being established 
in the southern states where malaria is 
prevalent. The Association and the co¬ 
operating societies sincerely thank the par¬ 
ticipants in this symposium for their con¬ 
tribution to it and to national defense. 
The phrase “national defense” in this 
statement does not apply only to present 
international problems, but to the continu¬ 
ing problem of defense against one of the 
most serious of the diseases that afflict man¬ 
kind. The Association is especially grate¬ 
ful to the organizing committee (The Pub¬ 
lication Committee) whose names appear 
on the title page, for without their guidance 
and individual papers it could not have 
made available this contribution to the 
advancement of science. 
F. R. Moulton 
