It
does not exact such a toll of suffering and death as influenza, nor as
typhoid used to do in crowded cities; nor is it as common as rheumatism
in damp and blustering New Zealand, where the thermometer ranges from 100
deg. in the shade to 24 deg. of frost. Malaria touches us lightly, and it
is chosen as a bugbear with which to scare people away. A southern
critic, honestly pitiful of our ill state, urges that the experiment of
destroying those mosquitoes which disseminate the germ of malaria, by
sealing up lagoons and swamps with kerosene, is worthy the attention of
town and country residents in tropical Queensland, "where attacks of
malaria are felt every summer." Mere idle words of pernicious
consequence. Many a wretch who has done less mischief than "these
utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal and clippers of reputation,"
has had his liberty restricted. But a small and an annually lessening
proportion of our population suffers from malaria, and yet all have the
renown of an annual attack! In that case the writer ought to have had
twenty-five attacks, and thousands of others, lusty and toneful fellows,
forty and forty-five attacks.
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