This is one of the outposts of the army of health. Of them there are several hundred, perhaps thousands, scattered through the Zone. The barrel is filled with a certain fluid combination of oil and divers chemicals called larvacide. Day and night with monotonous regularity it falls drop by drop into the rivulet, spreads over its surface and is deposited on the pebbles on the banks. The mosquito larvæ below must come to the surface to breathe. There they meet with the noxious fluid and at the first breath are slain. Automatically this one barrel makes that stream a charnel house for mosquito larvæ. But up and down throughout the land go men with cans of the oil on their backs and sprinklers in their hands seeking for pools and stagnant puddles which they spray with the larvacide. So between the war on the larva at its breeding point and the system of screening off all residences, offices and eating places the malarial infection has been greatly reduced. It has not been eradicated by any manner of means. The Panama cocktail (quinine) is still served with meals. In one year 2307.66 pounds of the drug were served out. But if not wholly obliterated the ailment has been greatly checked. Dr. A. J. Orenstein, of the Department of Sanitation, says in summing up the results of the policy:
FRENCH VILLAGE OF EMPIRE AFTER CLEANING UP BY AMERICANS
THE BAY OF TABOGA FROM THE SANITARIUM
“The campaign against malaria was inaugurated on the following plan: (1) Treatment with adequate doses of quinine (about 30 grains a day for adults) of all cases of malaria. First, because this treatment is curative; and, second, because unless so treated, each case of malaria constitutes a focus from which malaria spreads. In malarial regions there are many persons who have what is often spoken of as chronic malaria. Such individuals frequently do not suffer any serious inconvenience. They more often suffer from occasional headaches, anemia or slight fever. These are the people most dangerous from the standpoint of the sanitarian. It is in the blood of these individuals that the malaria-causing parasite has attained the form in which, if taken by a female anopheline, it develops within this mosquito into the form capable of causing malaria in the individual whom the anopheline may bite a week or so thereafter. (2) Protecting dwelling with copper wire gauze against the ingress of mosquitoes. All houses occupied by Americans and most of the others are screened. (3) Catching and killing mosquitoes within the dwellings. This is done by negro “mosquito catchers”, and is of great value in preventing malaria where other prophylactic measures cannot be inaugurated. (4) Destroying the breeding places of anophelinæ by filling, draining, and training the banks of streams. (5) Destroying the anophelinæ in the larval and pupal stages by oiling the water in which they are found, or applying a special larva poison to this water. (6) Clearing the rank vegetation in the immediate vicinity of dwellings and settlements, so as to destroy the shelter for such mosquitoes as may find their way to the vicinity of the houses; to hasten evaporation and the drying of small water collections and marshy places; to expose to view small breeding places and to remove the temptation to throw water containers into the vegetation.
THE LITTLE PANGO BOATS COME TO MEET YOU
“These measures, conscientiously and painstakingly carried out, resulted in reducing the number of malaria cases treated in the hospitals from 6.83 per cent of the working force per month in 1906 to 1.53 per cent of the working force per month in 1911, and the death from malaria among employees from 233 in 1906 to 47 in 1911”.
