Overview
The mosquito (2019) is a fascinating look into human history and how the mosquito has influenced the wellbeing of people. Certain essential but underappreciated variables have influenced today’s world events, and this film highlights them by focusing on the mosquito and the terrible diseases it transmits. The book opens with an examination of the history of the mosquito and how females of the genus Anopheles have been responsible for the death of humans for thousands of years. Some diseases associated with this insect include malaria, which has tormented the global world leaving a millions dead and others sick. Sickle cell anemia and Duffy negativity are two genetic defenses against malaria that humans have developed throughout history (Hemingway, 2019). The author also shows humanity’s millennium-long war against mosquitoes. The book argues that the last efforts to combat the effects of mosquito and the spread of diseases like malaria were rewarded in in the late 19th century as human attempted everything from coffee to urine to fight the insect and its diseases. People can now prevent and control mosquito bites by using insect repellent, and wearing a mosquito net. Those living in most malaria-endemic regions can also take malaria prevention tablets.
We have progressed from quinine and DDT to Artemisinin and vaccinations thanks to the efforts from research organizations and World Health Organization. Our endeavors to combat mosquitoes and malaria have been increasingly ineffectual as they have evolved to meet our difficulties, even if we have had some success in the past. As a result of the development of CRISPR technology, mosquitoes can now be eradicated. But Winegard points out that while it looks exiting to combat the effects of what seems one of the most notorious enemy of human well being, there are still some uncertainties about how to do it and whether or not it should be done at all. For instance, most of the world countries like Antarctica, Seychelles, and several of French Polynesian micro-islands are infested with more than 100 trillion mosquitoes at any given time.
The mosquitoes of millions of years ago couldn’t eat the dinosaurs, either. At least 5,200 years ago, people were aware of diseases spread by mosquitoes, but they didn’t know mosquitoes were to blame. Long time ago, people had different opinions on the misfortunes brought by mosquitos on human existence as some like the Sumerians blamed malaria on gods, while researchers believed that the diseases caused by mosquitoes were imposed on human beings as a curse. During the First Crusade, mosquitoes spread “some type of hemorrhagic sickness,” and monsoon rains contributed to the deaths of 1,500 people (Snyder, 2020). Columbus’s “person zero,” Winegard claims, probably brought malaria to the New World, resulting in “genocide by germs” among indigenous populations. Diseases like yellow fever were spread in Barbados by Dutch slave ship that was coming from West Africa. The book gives a broad detail of scientific data and millennia of historical context about the bloodsucking insect that has murdered half of all human beings in history. As a disease-carrying vector for many deadly diseases such as malaria and yellow fever, the insect has been targeted with all manner of means but it has persevered and is now more prominent is many parts of the world.
In the book’s sections about the mosquito’s role in selecting the winners and losers of wars, Winegard exhibits his expertise as a historian and political scientist to its most good advantage. For example, the Union could keep its soldiers safe from malaria because of an ample supply of quinine, while the Confederacy could not do so due to a naval blockade. Military strategists have employed Mosquitoes as weapons for millennia and sent enemy forces to low-lying swamps where the mosquito-borne disease was almost inevitable. It was the Nazis in Italy during World War II who employed this successful technique, but it was also used successfully by a wide range of other combatants throughout history. One of Haiti’s most fearless and cunning revolutionary leaders, Toussaint Louverture, enlisted an army of mosquitoes to aid in his war for independence from French rule. When the French were drawn into coastal and low-lying areas, he retreated into more salubrious highlands. He merely waited for malaria and yellow fever to annihilate his camp by killing the enemy.
Analysis
Dr. Winegard, an Oxford-educated professor of history and political science, says humans are essentially responsible for the prevalence of the disease caused by malaria, pointing to the change in culture and lifestyle. Most people have now abandoned what used to be small hunter-gatherer clan-based cultures and embraced largely densely populated settled societies which are recipe for the transmission of malaria and other diseases. The insect’s habitat has grown due to the blossoming of civilization. New rivers for mosquito spawning were created due to clearing land and installing irrigation.
Although the book is densely packed with statistics and technical language that may put off the casual reader, it nonetheless uncovers some fascinating connections. People of African ancestry, for example, may have a sickle cell characteristic that confers inherited protection to malaria because the pathogen cannot adhere to the sickle-shaped blood cell. It is worth noting that the Bantus of West Africa had immunological advantage since made iron weapons which they used to slash bushes which were likely to be vested with mosquitoes. Besides, they also grew crops like yams which produced chemicals that were believed to be drugs for malaria (Winegard, 2019).
Because of its role in killing warriors exposed to swamp-bred mosquito hordes, Winegard’s research shows malaria to be the most impactful disease in human civilization’s history. Malaria has left its mark on the global world as it killed great leaders like the Alexander the Great, and was also a major weapon in the American Civil War as it killed a thousand of white and black soldiers as well as civilians. In addition, European conquerors brought new strains of mosquito-borne disease to the Americas, decimating the local populations, and enslaved people from Africa provided the South with genetic resistance to malaria and protection from yellow fever. To understand how Christianity spread in a Third-Century Italy plagued by malaria, Winegard painstakingly deconstructs all this terrible calculus while simultaneously explaining the mosquito’s intertwined role in spreading Christianity.
Ancient Sumerians attributed malarial fevers to Nergal, the insect-like Babylonian god of the underworld, long before Western medicine identified mosquitos as the malaria vector in 1897. In the sixth century BCE, Indian physician Sushruta discovered the link between mosquito bites and malaria symptoms (Winegard, 2019). His accurate hypothesis was not recognized for thousands of years in the absence of proof, resulting in an incalculable number of lives lost. There are many dry and terrible elements omitted from historical writings that attempt to describe all aspects of human life for the sake of expediency. Fortunately, Winegard isn’t like that. Every opportunity is taken to weave in nasty and strange asides that the author has great staying power. Mexican-American War yellow fever deaths will likely fade from my memory, but the Egyptians’ use of fresh human urine to treat malaria will never be forgotten.
In this work, Winegard follows a fundamental timeline of death and devastation that spans the eons, unable to separate human history from that of the bug. In addition, Winegard argues that mosquito-related diseases were a major factor in the colonization of the Americas and other countries by Europeans. As a result of their exposure to malaria and yellow fever in their nations, the Europeans took African people from the continent to work as enslaved people in the Americas. It is astounding to think that millions of Africans may have never been subjected to the horrors of the Middle Passage or plantation slavery had it not been for mosquitoes acting as transmitters for these diseases.
Most interesting details
My favorite aspect of Winegard’s writing is that he doesn’t hold back when making unflattering assessments or pointing out historical errors. He makes humorous observations that certain African tribes willingly seized and sold enemy tribe members for Europeans, which helped the African slave trade thrive. It’s hard to tell which are the most calculating and the most terrifying. To wrap up, we’ll look at the mosquito’s role in disease transmission, first discovered in 1897, and the brief success story of malaria-fighting medications and the insecticide DDT during and after World War II (Tegler, 2020). These cures have been used too widely, and pharmaceutical corporations have profited from this, resulting in a lack of research into new treatments that swiftly resulted in resistant mosquitoes threatening humanity once again. As the latest weapon in our inventory, Winegard briefly mentions CRISPR and expresses optimism that it will help us fight back.
It is a powerful reminder of how much disease has afflicted humanity in the past and how much of this is due to a tiny flying bug with a stinging proboscis. Winegard’s narrative history book is engaging and absorbing. It’s no coincidence that the word “malaria,” which means “bad air,” in Medieval Italian, originates from the medieval Italian “mala aria,” which means “bad air.” Winegard exciting narrative about how mosquitoes have tormented the global world will appeal to anyone who appreciates popular history. In some cases, it seemed as though a chapter was nearing its conclusion, only to find exciting information that would make me think like I had just started reading the book. An exciting description of humanity’s terrible relationship with the mosquito is provided by Winegard, who reminds us that the mosquito still poses a threat now in the same way that it did thousands of years ago. After reading this book, the reader’s distaste towards mosquitoes will be reaffirmed, and will also appreciate the effects that the mosquito has caused on human beings and why it is important to combat them.
References
Hemingway, J. (2019). The world mosquitoes built.
Snyder, T. (2020). The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator.
Tegler, B. (2020). ” The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator” by Timothy C. Winegard, 2019.[book review]. The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 134(1), 92-93.
Winegard, T. C. (2019). The mosquito: a human history of our deadliest predator. Text Publishing.
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