llow fever mosquito is also suspected of carrying this same
disease, and it is possible that other species are also concerned. If
it is true that the parasite can be carried by several different species
of mosquitoes this would account very largely for its rapid spread
wherever it is introduced into a community. Where it occurs outside the
tropics it is only in the warm summer months when mosquitoes are always
abundant.

MALTA OR MEDITERRANEAN FEVER

This is also a tropical and subtropical disease that occasionally gets
up into the temperate region, sometimes occurring in the United States.
The fever begins with a severe headache, and other symptoms follow. It
is usually of the remittent type and may continue for some months.

It is caused by minute bacteria (_Micrococcus melitensis_) and is a very
infectious but not usually contagious disease. The germ is readily
conveyed by inoculation, and several investigators have sought to show
that the mosquito often serves as the inoculating agent. The disease is
especially prevalent during the mosquito season, and has twice been
conveyed to monkeys by infected insects.

LEPROSY

This loathsome disease has long been known to be caused by a particular
bacillus (_Bacillus leprae_), but the way in which this organism gains
an entrance into the system is still unknown. Many theories have been
propounded, but none of them has been well established. Within recent
years the possibility of insects carrying the germ and in one way or
another transmitting it to healthy individuals has been suggested and
much discussed. As the leprae bacilli are present in the skin and ulcers
of leprous patients, insects sucking the blood or feeding on the sores
could not help taking some of them into their body or becoming
contaminated. These bacilli have been found at various times in the
stomach or intestine of mosquitoes, fleas and bedbugs. So it is believed
by some that these and other insects, such as lice and flies, may
sometimes transmit the disease. On a previous page we have referred to
the possibility of the face-mites acting as disseminators of leprosy.

Leprosy occurs most commonly among people where little attention is paid
to bodily cleanliness. Such people are usually freely infested with
various parasites that thrive well in the filth, so if the germs can be
transmitted in this way the carriers are there in abundance.

The fact that the sores usually occur on exposed parts of th