Friday, February 18, 2005
100 Years Ago at JAMA
Schoolboy Mosquito Brigades.
In San Antonio, Texas, a campaign against the mosquito has been taken up in a rather peculiar way. The health officer of New Orleans, who has been manfully striving to overcome the difficulties in that city, was apparently forced to go out of the city to demonstrate what might be done. He...has started a movement among the school children to fight the mosquito. We have heard of Mr. Sherlock Holmes' Baker street gang, to which he applied sometimes to search out important facts, using the street boys for his purpose. There is very little that escapes a live boy if his attention is called to it. Dr. Kohnke's demonstrations seem to have started the enthusiasm of the San Antonio schoolboys, and it is a wary wiggletail that is going to escape their attention, according to newspaper accounts...Under properly regulated supervision we can see no more successful mosquito brigade than one composed of thoroughly instructed schoolboys indulging their natural destructive tendencies in killing these pestilent insects.
In San Antonio, Texas, a campaign against the mosquito has been taken up in a rather peculiar way. The health officer of New Orleans, who has been manfully striving to overcome the difficulties in that city, was apparently forced to go out of the city to demonstrate what might be done. He...has started a movement among the school children to fight the mosquito. We have heard of Mr. Sherlock Holmes' Baker street gang, to which he applied sometimes to search out important facts, using the street boys for his purpose. There is very little that escapes a live boy if his attention is called to it. Dr. Kohnke's demonstrations seem to have started the enthusiasm of the San Antonio schoolboys, and it is a wary wiggletail that is going to escape their attention, according to newspaper accounts...Under properly regulated supervision we can see no more successful mosquito brigade than one composed of thoroughly instructed schoolboys indulging their natural destructive tendencies in killing these pestilent insects.
