Insects and Diseases: A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread or Cause some of our Common DiseasesDoane, Rennie Wilbur
Science
Insects and Diseases: A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread or Cause some of our Common Diseases
Doane, Rennie Wilbur
Insect pests; Insects as carriers of disease
One of the first things that the United States Government did in
beginning work in the canal zone was to take up the fight against the
yellow fever mosquito. In Panama where the water for domestic purposes
was kept in cisterns and water-barrels, inspectors were appointed to see
that all such receptacles and other possible breeding-places for
mosquitoes were kept covered. After the first inspection, 4,000
breeding-places were reported. About six months later there were less
than 400. Similar work was done in all the towns and settlements along
the route of the canal. In addition to this fight against the yellow
fever mosquito considerable attention was paid to the breeding-places of
the malarial mosquito. The results have been remarkable. Cases of yellow
fever are now rare throughout this zone, and there has been a very great
reduction in the extent of the malarial districts. The last case of
yellow fever occurred in May, 1906. Before this work was done a man took
his life in his hands when he went into this region. Now it is regarded
as a perfectly safe place to live. Indeed it is a much safer place than
many sections of our own country where proper sanitary measures have not
been taken to protect the health of the community.
IN RIO DE JANEIRO
In Rio de Janeiro they have as yet been unable to get rid of the
mosquitoes, although thousands of dollars are spent annually in fighting
them. But the non-immunes there protect themselves by doing their
business in Rio during the day and going back at night to Petropolis,
twenty-five miles inland and twenty-five hundred feet higher, where
they are safe, for no _Stegomyia_ have ever been found there.
They claim there that the yellow fever mosquito does not bite during the
daytime after she has laid her eggs, and that she will not lay her eggs
until about three days after she has fed on blood, therefore a
_Stegomyia_ that bites during the day will not carry the yellow fever
because she is too young. This seems to explain why the fever cannot be
contracted by being bitten by a mosquito in the daytime. Certain other
experiments, however, have given different results so that as far as we
know it is not safe to be bitten at any time by such a mosquito in a
region where the disease is endemic or where it is epidemic.
In the main the work of the French Yellow Fever Commission working in
Rio de Janeiro has confirmed the findings of the American Commission.
One interesting special thing that the French Commission seems to have
established is that the female may transmit the infecting power to her
offspring, so that it would be possible for a mosquito that had never
bitten a yellow fever patient to be capable of infecting a non-immune
person. While all this is very probable in the light of what we know of
the disease and the way in which other diseases caused by similar
organisms may be transmitted by the parent to the offspring, yet the
most conservative investigators are waiting for further proof.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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