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Show J 4 : Anopheles Our Most Dangerous Enemy. By Frederic JV Haskin. f WASHINGTON, D. C, March 25. That large areas of good farming land In the United States have been kept unsettled unset-tled and undeveloped for three centuries by one of the smallest, but most dangerous, danger-ous, of wild animals seems an incredible statement. The. United States public health service is authoritv for it. The wild animal referred re-ferred to is the Anopheles mosquito, which is the carrier of malaria. The lower peninsula of Virginia is given as an examnle of a rich region which has never been developed solely because of the prevalence of malaria there. Public health officials say that, although this is a grood farminer country and was one of the first uarts of America settled by white men, lai-gre parts of it contain only one familv to three souare miles. An old record shows that Jamestown, Va.. was abandoned "because of epidem-icals." epidem-icals." and the public health men say that the word undoubtedly refers to malaria, which probably was a worse enemy to Captain John Smith and his followers than were the Indians. The uublic health service Ss now inaugurating inau-gurating a nation-wide campaign against malaria. Letters have been sent by the surtreon-ireneral to the governors of all states and' to the mavors of all cities of more than 8000 people in the regions where malaria is prevalent, asking for their co-ooeration in the fight. The public pub-lic health service further offers Its assistance as-sistance to anv individual or community in the fight against malaria. If you wish to ehminare this disease from your section, sec-tion, apply to the public health service through your state health officer. It necessarv a special sanitary engineer will be sent to assist you in the work. The difficult Dart of the antimalaria campaign is to make people of the United States realize how serious the damage done bv malaria is. The influenza, with its sudden sneetacular onset and high death rate, attracted wide attention. Literally Lit-erally evervone in tho United States joined the fight against it. The newspapers newspa-pers took it up, and when the newspapers attack a national menace it is about done for. You never see much about malaria in the newsDanrs. or hear much about it. Yet six or seven million people in the United States suffer from It every year. A small nercentaee of these die, but .all of them are weakened and many rendered ren-dered nractically useless. Enormous areas are made almost unproductive by malaria. It is said that no such thing exists as a reallv prosperous white community com-munity in a malarial region. Throughout erea t sections of the near-south practically practi-cally everv child has miliaria, and children chil-dren suffer most from it. Tho backwardness back-wardness of certain classes of southern children in schools is said by health experts ex-perts to be almost wholly due to the malaria. ma-laria. And backwardness in" Hchool Is not the worst effect of iho dV-sease. The mental and physical dovelojtTffeiit of these children is retarded, and (he ranks of that class si i met iines described ar "poor white trash" are l really swelled. In a word, where malaria is uncontrolled, if the white man stays he degenerates; if he coes. larare areas are left uncultivated,-and uncultivated,-and the best of the land falls iutu thii hands of netrroes. At one time malaria was much morej widely prevalent than it is today. Sani- j tary conditions Improve surely, if 'slow- J ly. The importance of taking quinine in malarial leerions is more generally recognized, rec-ognized, and the faith in certain worth les natent medicines that once were widehv used has fortunately declined. But nearly half the country is still ravaged rav-aged bv the disease to some extent. In general, it is moHt prevalent in the most-;: thinly settled rural districts, while in ., modern cities it no longer exists, though -it still Prevents development and in-.: jures property values in the suburbs of . some important cities of the south. - The largest malarial area in the United, States includes the whole southeast, as far wast as Texas and eastern Kansa3 and as far north as the northern boun-: dary of Maryland. The nothern malarial" area takes in parts of New Jersey, New York. Connecticut. Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Mas-sachusetts. A third area includes the Sacramento .and San Joaquin valleys inf California. Malaria is not limited ex- clusivelv to these "endemic areas," ai the public health service calls them, nor is It Drevalent throughout them. But malaria is a danger throughout the greater part of these regions, and actually actu-ally does damage in a large part of the total area involved. ,1 There are several reasons why this spring is the right time 'for a national drive against malaria. In the first place, this is . the time of the year when tha , Anopheles mosauito can be most easily destroyed. The spring breeding season begins in the south late in March and in the first week of April as far north as Newport News, Va. Farther north tli season becins a little later. . Early starine:. therefore, is the time toj undertake the work of eradication by oil- mg the water surfaces, draining stag- fc nant pools, and taking all of the other j measures to make mosquito breeding hn- . possiblft. The methods are all well known, andCj have proved their effectiveness. Theo-f retically. malaria is a disease entirely within their control. . In Panama we learned how to eliminate elimi-nate it under the difficult conditions of a tropical country. Throughout the wai just ended, malaria was practieally eliminated elimi-nated frona all the cantonments and extra-cantonment zones. Many of these, training camps were in the midst of th malaruil districts. In none of them wai there much malaria, and in most of their! there was none at all. Mosquitoes were a rare sierht about the cantonments, and the Anopheles mosquito was almost un--. known. This was a demonstration in the malarial reeions of the south that malaria ma-laria can be absolutely controlled there.v. and It was a demonstration witnessed and appreciated bv many thousands ol civilians. The public health servic states that during the war malaria wa successfully -controlled in forty-three different dif-ferent arey.s and in fffteen states, and that 1200 souare miles of territory wer( rid of the AnoDheles mosquito. , This nroves conclusively that the thing can be done. Nor is there any question hut what it can be done at an expense far less in amount than the damage which malaria annually causes in the United States. The whole problem is oues of arousing public opinion on tne sub ject. ' Large industrial concerns ip the soum i a re betrinnnine" to realize that tney cannot afford malaria among their working work-ing forces. In certain lumber region, where preventive measures have been taken, the lumber output has been con-j. siderablv increased. On many southern plantations the crop is cut to ft fraction i of what It should bo by the ravages or. . malaria. Larpe numbers of laborers are taken down with chills and fever at tne-., time when their services are niosu needed. . |