Mosquito brigades and how to organise them / by Ronald Ross.

Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mosquito brigades and how to organise them / by Ronald Ross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    The dumping-grounds should be situated as near as possible, in order to save time in transit The rubbish can be most effectually used in filling up ponds and borrow- pits; otherwise it must be discharged at the municipal dumping-ground. Dr. Logan Taylor and myself found, as the result of our work in Sierra Leone, that a gang of six men can keep one large mule-cart fully employed, and that on the average it can clear fifty houses and remove ten cartloads of broken vessels daily—one cartload for every five houses. The head man must keep an account of all the houses cleared by his gang, and also of the number of cartloads removed. He must be extremely polite to all the inmates of the houses—especially to the older ladies. If, as some- times, but rarely, happens, he comes to a house where the owner forbids his entry, he should simply leave that house alone (being, however, careful to record the address for future reference), and go on to the next one. But the head man has also other duties to perform. In every house he will find several tubs or pots of water stored for use by the occupants, and in many of these he will find crowds of Culex larvae. He should call attention to the larvae, and endeavour to explain that they are the young of mosquitoes. If he is not believed (which, so advanced is education among the people, will generally be the case— even among certain classes of Europeans) he should place a few larvae in a bottle half full of water, bunged with paper, and tell the sceptics to keep them under observation for a few days. He should then ask leave to pour out the larvae remaining in the vessel in which they were originally found, upon the ground, where they will speedily perish. If, however, the water in the vessel is required by the