Abstract

Sardinia held the unenviable primacy regarding the highest mortality index due to malaria from 1880 to past the actual War years, when the Rockefeller Foundation eradicated its vector Anopheles labranchiae both within the island and around all of the Mediterranean basin.
During the half of the century proceding the discoveries of the transmission of malaria and DDT, all the strategies of the antimalarial campaigns had many motifs in relation to each new scientific discovery. During the previous period of time and, especially, during the first twenty years after the unification of Italy, the antimalarial strategy was directed towards the hydraulic drainage (in accordance with the Baccarini law of 1882) because all were convinced that the draining of the ponds and marshes did away with the infamous "miasmas" which were considered to be the source of the malarial infection. All the draining activity -which was made on those areas that were more ruinous due to the hydrogeological disorders- had no effect with regard to the hygienic and health features: in some cases, the drain missing allowed the marshes making where the Anopheles could live.

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