The anti-malaria school, Nettuno, Italy: a man wearing face-protection and gloves to protect against mosquitos. Photograph, 1920/1930 (?).

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<p>Nettuno is a place to the south of Rome in Italy. It is in the area known as the Pomptine or Pontine Marshes, which were for centuries notorious for their unhealthiness. They were the home to one of the species of mosquito which transmits the disease malaria. From the fourth century BC onwards there were many attempts to drain the marshes, but all of them failed until 1928 when a new and more effective drainage project was started by the Fascist government of Italy: the project was successfully concluded in 1939, and the area became dry and fertile. The school of malariology (Scuola Pratica di Malariologia) was founded there in 1918; the impulse was the increase in malaria victims in Italy in World War I after the repatriation of 50,000 Italians infected with malaria in Africa and elsewhere, and the shortage of quinine in Italy in the second half of the war. The school was managed by the Consiglio Superiore della Sanità, which was in turn a department of the Direzione Generale della Sanità, which in turn reported to the Ministry of the Interior. This structure had been set up in 1888 in a conscious attempt to modernize Italy's public health strategy. One of the leaders of the reform was the hygiene expert Alberto Lutrario (1861-1937), who presented this photograph, and others in the same album, to the Wellcome Library</p>

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The anti-malaria school, Nettuno, Italy: a man wearing face-protection and gloves to protect against mosquitos. Photograph, 1918/1937 (?).

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