MALARIA IN MEXICO

The traditional picture of Mexico, at least to the average tourist, is never complete without a peon, in sombrero and serape, sleeping in the noonday sun, or putting off to manana whatever physical exertion is required. Actually, when seriously considered, this picture is found to be a myth, no more representative of the Mexican than the traditional cowboy or gangster image is of the American. What is interesting in the image of the peon, however, is that he is an excellent example of a population debilitated by malaria. To most North Americans, the existence of endemic malaria in an industrialized, modern nation is unthinkable -it is considered to be a lowland tropical disease of undeveloped nations. As recently as 1957, however, it was in Mexico the leading cause of death from infectious disease, accounting for 519.6 deaths per million population, far exceeding such killers as tuberculosis (302.1 per million), influenza (270.9 per million), dysentery (188.6 permillion) and typhoid (117.8 permillion).1 Doubly interesting is the fact that, by that year, both smallpox and yellow fever had been vanquished, evidence of the progress of modern medicine in Mexico. Since 1957, malaria also has declined in its toll in human lives, but a question is raised of how extensive that toll may have been historically.