The Mosquito Wars: A History of Mosquito Control in Florida (review)

This is a useful contribution to the history of malaria control. It is written with a certain literary verve, and can be recommended to a general audience as well as to students of the history of public health and the environment.

After a one-chapter survey of the history of human interaction with mosquitoes, Gordon Patterson finds his pace in the second chapter, establishing that the 1888 yellow fever epidemic in Jacksonville persuaded the Florida state government to create a board of health. While that was the beginning of attempts at epidemic disease control in Florida, it was some years before the board had sufficient funding. Among the board's modest accomplishments was its rather quick acceptance of the idea that mosquitoes transmitted yellow fever after Walter Reed showed the connection in 1903. Yet it was not until a call from the malarious town of Perry in 1920 that the board had an opportunity to show how this idea could be applied to the fight against malaria. The state board of health joined with the U.S. Public Health Service to develop a comprehensive program for mosquito control in Perry and the surrounding county. Draining swamps, oiling waters, and the widespread distribution of the larva-eating Gambusia minnow were the major environmental strategies. The citizens were taught to screen their houses and were given liberal doses of quinine. After one year of the program, malaria infection rates were reportedly down to 10 percent of what they had been. While these were by that time well-known techniques for mosquito control, it was their first systematic demonstration in Florida.

The problem for Florida was that mosquito-breeding waters were ubiquitous while the residential development of the state was continuous. Even though yellow fever subsided as a threat to public health, malaria was a major problem, and there were regular outbreaks of dengue. The state government was generally controlled by fiscal conservatives who were not attracted to the concept of statewide agencies run by experts. The state board of health could not rely on consistent funding, and local governments tended to be allied with real estate interests that saw little to be gained by anti-mosquito campaigns that focused public attention on the problem. The hurricane disasters of the 1920s and the economic depression of the next decade deferred any statewide approach to mosquito control.

The post–World War II availability of DDT is a familiar story. In Florida the wonder chemical began to be utilized extensively in 1945, and was a "stunning success" (p. 111). The last native case of malaria was recorded in 1948, and in 1953 the state legislature enacted powerful legislation that permitted local governments to set up mosquito control boards. The next twenty years were a "golden age" for mosquito-control officials and advocates in Florida: while mosquitoes were no more eradicated in Florida than anywhere else in the world, major portions of the state became safe for residential development and vacation resorts. The state was on its latter-twentieth-century rise from economic and social backwater to one of the most populous and popular parts of the United States.

Toward the end of his volume Patterson frankly engages the political conflict between the eventually entrenched mosquito-control establishment and a growing environmental consciousness among Florida's citizens. While he extends some sympathy to each side, he particularly spotlights the arrogance of officials committed to spraying insecticides in spite of increasing recognition of their hazards. This is an important story, well-told. But Patterson neglects to engage what must be an equally significant story of private development. How did Disney World control the mosquito?

While establishing a chronology of mosquito control in Florida is a valuable service, Patterson might have done more to connect Florida's story to events in the United States as a whole and around the globe. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S...