The use of the new insecticide DDT in relation to the problems of tropical medicine

Abstract

Though DDT probably is poisonous to all arthropods, no harmful symptoms have been recorded among human workers, some of whom have been careless and ignorant. Widely varying doses, however, are found to be effective for different spp., the largest recorded being > 10,000 times as much as the smallest. Mosquitoes, house- and blood-sucking flies, head-, body-, and other lice, bed-bugs, fleas, mites and ticks arc susceptible, though some of the latter show high resistance. Incomplete tests with ants have been somewhat disappointing. Mite-borne typhus control, and human scabies, present problems iu which the drug is disappointing:. Discovery of DDT is "probably the greatest advance in insect control . . . ever made," but much field research on it is still necessary.