one venomous creature there is in this country which may justly be termed a public peril, in the widest sense. proportionately to population, more victims fall to it yearly in the united states than to the dreaded cobra in india. some twelve thousand americans are killed every year by its bite. three hundred thousand more are made seriously ill from the after effects. unfortunately, the virus works so slowly that alarm is stilled. the victims do not sicken at once. the bite is forgotten; but ten days or two weeks after, the subject falls into a fever. his blood is poisoned within him. eventually, in extreme cases, he becomes delirious, succumbs to a stupor, and dies.
yet, because there is nothing horrific to the sensation-loving imagination in the malaria-bearing mosquito, public inertia or ignorance tolerates it with a grin and permits it to breed in city and country alike throughout the length and breadth of the nation. compared with it, as a real menace, all the combined brood of snakes, scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, and other pet bugaboos of our childish romanticism are utterly negligible; are as figment to reality, as shadow to substance. it is perhaps characteristic of our wryly humorous american temperament that we should have invested the unimportant danger with all the shuddering attributes of horror, and have made of the real peril a joke to be perennially hailed with laughter in a thousand thoughtless prints.
