Mosquitoes and Malaria in 1926

Mosquitoes cause annual damage amounting to $100 million dollars, or 91 cents for each person in the United States. Three million cases of chills and fever were directly attributable to these pests last year.

From page 4 of The Concord Daily Tribune, June 10, 1926

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-06-10/ed-1/seq-4/

Editor’s Note: When the Tribune reported that mosquitoes caused three million cases of ‘chills and fever’ last year, readers knew exactly what that meant: malaria. In the 1920s, malaria was still widespread across the American South. Entire counties had annual outbreaks, and quinine was a household medicine. The CDC wouldn’t be founded for another twenty years — and its first mission was malaria control in the United States.

We still have mosquitoes. Could malaria ever come back? Yes, and it already has come back in small pockets. In 2023 the CDC confirmed locally transmitted malaria in Florida, Texas and Maryland. They were small clusters but they were the first malaria cases in the U.S. in 20 years. How did this happen? When travelers bring malaria parasites back from abroad, local mosquitoes bite them. Then those mosquitoes bite someone else and transmission begins.