1900-1962期間瘧疾肆虐下的義大利
The Conquest of Malaria in Italy, 1900-1962

The anonymous tip attached an enlargement of suspect’s vehicle plate.
有個暱名舉報附帶了一張有放大嫌疑犯車牌的照片。

They showed immense courage in the face of danger.
他們在面對危險時表現得非常勇敢。

The position of the duke is hereditary; therefore, he has to decide a successor who will take over after he passed away.
公爵的爵位是世襲制的，因此他得提早在他過世前立好繼位者。

Jimmy dreads going to the dentist.
Jimmy害怕去看牙醫。

The Niagara Fall was indeed a startling sight in the world.
尼加拉瓜瀑布確實是世界奇觀。

The police don’t have definitive proof of his guilt.
警察尚未找到關於他犯罪的決定性證據。

They're busy campaigning against the building of a new cell tower here.
他們正積極發起反對在附近新建基地台的行動。

Our flight had to be diverted to Los Angeles International Airport because of the storm.
由於遇到暴風雨，我們的班機被迫改在洛杉磯國際機場降落。

Under the new regime, the government’s employees are not allowed to join the campaign.
在新政府的規定下，政府員工被禁止參加競選活動。

Using pesticide is not the best way to neutralize the pests.
使用殺蟲劑並不是滅絕害蟲的最佳方式。

The Conquest of Malaria in Italy, 1900-1962

Everybody now knows that malaria is carried by mosquitoes. But in the 19th century, most experts believed that the disease was produced by "miasma" or "poisoning of the air". Others made a link between swamps, water and malaria, but did not make the further leap towards insects. The consequences of these theories were that little was done to combat the disease before the end of the century. Things became so bad that 11 million Italians (from a total population of 25 million) were "permanently at risk". In malarial zones, the life expectancy of land workers was a terrifying 22.5 years. Those who escaped death were weakened or suffered from splenomegaly —a "painful enlargement of the spleen'" and "a lifeless stare". The economic impact of the disease was immense. Epidemics were blamed on southern Italians, given the widespread belief that malaria was hereditary. In the 1880s, such theories began to collapse as the dreaded mosquito was identified as the real culprit.

Italian scientists, drawing on the pioneering work of French doctor Alphonse Laveran, were able to predict the cycles of fever but it was in Rome that further key discoveries were made. Giovanni Battista Grassi, a naturalist, found that a particular type of mosquito was the carrier of malaria. By experimenting on healthy volunteers (mosquitoes were released into rooms where they drank the blood of the human guinea pigs), Grassi was able to make the direct link between the insects (all females of a certain kind) and the disease. Soon, doctors and scientists made another startling discovery: the mosquitoes themselves were also infected and not mere carriers. Every year, during the mosquito season, malarial blood was moved around the population by the insects. Definitive proof of these new theories was obtained after an extraordinary series of experiments in Italy, where healthy people were introduced into malarial zones but kept free of mosquito bites—and remained well. The new Italian state had the necessary information to tackle the disease.

A complicated approach was adopted, which made use of quinine-- a drug obtained from tree bark which had long been used to combat fever, but was now seen as a crucial part of the war on malaria. Italy introduced a quinine law and a quinine tax in 1904, and the drug was administered to large numbers of rural workers….