| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Margaret Humphreys. Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2001. Pp. 196. $41.50.
Margaret Humphreys weaves a complex and fascinating story of the social history of malaria. She considers the history of malaria from three perspectives: that of physicians, people, and parasites. Telling the story from the physicians' perspective means following the medical and public health literature; telling it from the people's perspective means drawing on diaries and letters and especially on the voluminous records produced by the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s; telling it from the parasites' perspective means paying close attention to the changing ecology of the anopheles mosquito and therefore to the likely fate of the parasites it carried.	1
Humphreys traces the European introduction and spread of what was then known as "intermittent fever" throughout the colonies. Malaria gradually receded from established towns and cities and came to be associated with rough conditions on the frontier. The disease was particularly associated with marshy, swampy places, stagnant water, and rotting vegetation. By 1900, the disease had retreated to the southern states, and was considered a symptom of the poverty and backwardness of the South. By this time, scientists and physicians knew that malaria was transmitted by the anopheles mosquito, and they knew also that its transmission could be interrupted by draining the swamps, oiling the water where the mosquitoes reproduced, and putting mesh screens on houses to keep out the insects.	2
The International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation worked with the United States Public Health Service to test malaria control methods on the Mississippi Delta. They found that the available mosquito control methods worked fairly well in the towns but were more difficult—and correspondingly more expensive—in rural areas. The development of hydroelectric power was a particular problem, for when power companies dammed rivers, they created standing bodies of water, and these provided breeding grounds for explosive local malaria epidemics. The power companies were only persuaded to take precautions against malaria by the threat of multiple lawsuits.	. . .

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