z8o


The Central Valley


states were heavily involved and to which they made extensive contri-
butions are yellow fever, hookworm disease, and malaria. The dramatic
revelations in the spread and control of yellow fever have been pre-
sented in some detail. Less circumstantially we have given the findings
of C. W. Stiles and the campaign of the Rockefeller Commission in
preventing the spread of the hookworm. The local efforts, both com-
munity and state, in the gradual reduction of this debilitating disease
deserve credit. Education and the raising of the economic level have
been major factors. The world importance of malaria cannot be exag-
gerated. In our own country it spread northward in human carriers and
after the opening of the West (now the Middle West) it became the
great endemic disease.
   Drawing from the excellent history of malaria in the United States
 by the distinguished malariologist M. A. Barber, we find much about
 this disease in the southern states.
   In the Southern States malaria is still prevalent, especially in the valleys
of the larger
 rivers. There is no doubt, however, that malaria has decreased in the South
as well as
 in the North, although the diminution has been less marked and has proceeded
at a
 slower rate. Bass states that malaria was rife in New Orleans and the territory
sur-
 rounding it between i 89o and 19goo. Large numbers of cases were treated
in the New
 Orleans Charity Hospital, where at present they are so few that it is difficult
to get
 enough material for teaching purposes. Dr. Henry R. Carter has noted a decrease
in
 North Carolina and Virginia.
 Barber's summary runs as follows:
   Malaria was once very prevalent in the northern United States. During
the past 50
 or 6o years it has greatly diminished and is no longer a serious problem
there. In the
 Southern States malaria has also decreased, but in many localities the rate
is still high
 and constitutes an important sanitary problem.
   The liability of a serious increase of malaria in the North is not great
so long as the
 present economic status of that region persists; in the South the danger
of a recrudes-
 cence of the disease is much greater, as the events of the past few years
have demon-
 strated.
   The factors concerned in the diminution of malaria in the United States
are inter-
 dependent; their importance has varied with time and locality, but all have
been closely
 related to the agricultural development of the country.

 Texas9
                I. M. LEWIS
    Bacteriology has grown up in the several institutions of Texas
  largely after our period of observation. At the University of Texas be-