MENACE OF MALARIA

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 October 1928, Page 9

MENACE OF MALARIA

MOSQUITOES AND MUSIC

Think of the Police Band of Mexico City ridding sections of Texas of that dreadful scourge, malaria, by playing the sort of music that bats don’t like, and then ask yourself if the day of miracles has passed; Here is the story in detail, as recorded by Dr Charles A. R. Campbell, of San Antonio, Texas, who for twenty-one years has devoted his life to a study of that world-wide plague—malaria, its propagator the mosquito, and the mosquito’s natural enemy, the bat, which the doctor calls one of man’s greatest benefactors and friends, writes Fred High in the “Musical Courier.” Dr Campbell states that he tried for years to colonise the bat much after the manner that we have colonised the honey bee, but his problem was to got the bats to leave their present unsanitary, unsafe and unhealthy places of years after this serenade, but never again was either of them inhabited by the bats.

In certain sections of Texas, Dr Campbell reports that 89 per cent, of the men, women, and children were infected and suffering from the ravages of malaria, fever, but since the establishment of these bat-roosts, this has been wiped out entirely, and to-day the people are free from mosquitoes, free from malaria, and. free to labour unhampered by day and to recuperate by night; the beasts in the field are no longer tantalised by these vampires and pestiferous disease spreaders, and even fowls on the farm have been emancipated, and all this without drugs, dope, inoculations, or other questionable but surely harmful methods.

That this is not the pretence of a culturist or quack is easily proven by the fact that Dr Campbell has the endorsement of his local and State Health Boards and by national and international sanitarians like General W. C. Gorgas. His City Council and (he State Legislature have honoured him by recognising his works and by passing enactments making it unlawful to kill a. bat in the State of Texas. It. is estimated that 20,000,000 Bottles of “chill medicine” are consumed annually in (he United States, and that the direct . cost of malaria alone is 250.000,000 dollars a year. In certain sections of Texas alone there arc said to be 98,000,000 acres of that are richer than the famous Nile Valley acres, and yet they are uninhabitable because of the billions of mosquitoes that infest them and make life unbearable for man or beast. Dr Ross, an eminent scientist, has recently said: “The downfall of Greece and the degeneracy of those wonderful people may well be attributed to the malaria that attacks about 45 per cent, of the people of that section.”