The Home Medical Library, Volume 5 (of 6) — John Shaqi
The Home Medical Library, Volume 5 (of 6)
Science
The Home Medical Library, Volume 5 (of 6)
Medicine; Medicine, Popular
"The quantity of kerosene to be practically used, as shown by the
writer's experiments, is approximately one ounce to fifteen square
feet of water surface, and ordinarily the application need not be
renewed for one month.... The writer is now advising the use of the
grade known as lubricating oil, as the result of the extensive
experiments made on Staten Island. It is much more persistent than the
ordinary illuminating oils.... On ponds of any size the quickest and
most perfect method of forming a film of kerosene will be to spray the
oil over the surface of the water.... It is not, however, the great
sea marshes along the coast, where mosquitoes breed in countless
numbers, which we can expect to treat by this method, but the inland
places, where the mosquito supply is derived from comparatively small
swamps and circumscribed pools. In most localities people endure the
torment or direct their remedies against the adult insect only,
without the slightest attempt to investigate the source of the supply,
when the very first step should be the undertaking of such an
investigation.
"The remedy which depends upon draining breeding places needs no
extended discussion. Naturally the draining off of the water of pools
will prevent mosquitoes from breeding there, and the possibility of
such draining and the means by which it may be done will vary with
each individual case. The writer is informed that an elaborate bit of
work which has been done at Virginia Beach bears on this method.
Behind the hotels at this place, the hotels themselves fronting upon
the beach, was a large fresh-water lake, which, with its adjoining
swamps, was a source of mosquito supply, and it was further feared
that it made the neighborhood malarious. Two canals were cut from the
lake to the ocean, and by means of machinery the water of the lake was
changed from a body of fresh to a body of salt water. Water that is
somewhat brackish will support mosquitoes, but water that is purely
salt will destroy them."
_Employing Fish to Destroy Larvae_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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