The Mosquito Campaign as a Sanitary Measure

Insects as factors in sanitary work have been very little regarded until recent years and, practically, only since it was demonstrated that mosquitoes of certain species were necessary intermediate agents in the transmission of certain febrile diseases. Thr history of that demonstration has been well written by Howard, Blanchard, Theobald and others, and need be only referred to here. Since that time, attention having been directed to the class, certain ticks, lice, fleas and flies have been convicted as carriers or tranlsiiitters of a variety of diseases of man and other anilnals, an(1 tllis branch of entomoloogical research lias become of the highest practical importance. To emphasize the agency of one of the carriers, Howard has proposed that the common house fly be hereafter known as the typhoid fly and, while there are objections to the name, it is not inadvisable to follow him; remembering the wliile that it is really only a typhoid fly, and not the only species capable of carrying the morbific organism. Nor is its ability as a carrier confined to typhoid or even enteric diseases. Any pathological iiiicrobe, bacillus or other creature capable of being taken up and carriecd from one place to another may be transported by this omnipresent pest. and the comma and colon bacillus are equally liable to be ingested and again discharged in virulent condition. There are the radical differences between a transmitter and a carrier of a disease germ, for a transmitter is usually ageiit for one parasitic organism only, while a carrier may transplort a nuiiber. Stegomyia calopus is a transmitter of yellow fever only alnd so far as our knowledge extelnds at present, the only transmitter of that disease. Certain species of Atophelcs are transmitters of the various forms of malaria and. so far as we know, the only transmitters of those diseases. Eliminate Stegomyia and A4nopheles and at the same time yellow and malarial fevers have been disposed of; but even if every house fly could be at one blow destroyed. (424)

Biology · Organism · Telecommunications · Transmission (telecommunications · Typhoid fever · Zoology · Computer Science · Ecology · Mosquito-borne diseases and control · Virology