Mosquitoes Have Shaped Societies as Well as Decimating Them

During the second world war, American troops in the Far East were said to have two foes. The first was Japanese. One propaganda poster depicted an enemy’s sabre, slick with blood. The second adversary had no sword but was terrifying all the same. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes infected around 60% of Americans stationed in the Pacific at least once. Drugs such as Atabrine could help, but nasty side-effects meant that some GIs shunned their daily dose – with predictable consequences. “These Men Didn’t Take Their Atabrine” warned a sign propped below a pair of human skulls in Papua New Guinea.考生如果怕自己錯過考試報名時間和考試時間的話，可以 免費預約短信提醒，屆時會以短信的方式提醒大家報名和考試時間。

At least decent treatment was available. For most of human existence, says Timothy Winegard in his lively history of mosquitoes, “we did not stand a chance” against the insect and its diseases. That was partly because of ignorance. Earlier humans blamed malaria and its mosquito-borne cousins on “bad air” from swamps, even as the years passed and death kept whining at their ears. Malaria once killed over 20% of people in the Fens of eastern England. Yellow fever ravaged Memphis, Tennessee, deep into the 1800s. No wonder Mr Winegard calls the mosquito a “destroyer of worlds”, which may have dispatched around half of all humans ever born.

But his book is more than a litany of victims. Mr Winegard convincingly argues that the insect has shaped human life as well as delivering death. Mosquitoes helped save the Romans from Hannibal and Europe from the Mongols. And if malaria has changed history, so has resistance to it. Europeans believed that the relative immunity enjoyed by some Africans made them ideal slaves in the New World. Later, the tables were turned. “They will fight well at first, but soon they will fall sick and die like flies,” predicted Toussaint Louverture of the Frenchmen sent to end his slave revolution in Haiti. He was right. About 85% of the 65,000 soldiers deployed to the colony died of mosquito-borne illnesses, and Haiti won its independence.

These dashes across time and distance could become exhausting, but Mr Winegard is an engaging guide, especially when he combines analysis with anecdote. One highlight relays a bizarre plot by a Confederate zealot to infect Abraham Lincoln with yellow fever; another passage explains the ancient Egyptian habit of fighting malarial fevers by bathing in urine. (A few of the witticisms fall flat. Calling the 18th-century Caribbean a “dinner-party buffet” for mosquitoes seems glib, for example; anthropomorphising the pests as a “guerrilla force” is a metaphor too far.)

But much of Mr Winegard’s narrative is thrilling – above all the concluding chapters in which he tackles the modern mosquito. Drugs and insecticides have helped slash malaria rates, but mosquitoes can quickly develop immunity themselves. In total, the insects still kill over 800,000 people every year. And though gene-editing might one day render them harmless, or even obliterate them altogether, mosquito-borne illnesses such as Zika have recently been spreading to new regions. The destroyer of worlds has not finished yet.

蚊子奪去了很多人的性命，也塑造了人類社會

第二次世界大戰期間，據說美軍在遠東地區有兩個敵人。一個是日軍，有張宣傳海報就畫了一把染著鮮血的日本軍刀。第二個敵人雖說沒有刀，但同樣令人恐懼。駐扎在太平洋地區的美軍約有60%曾被攜帶瘧疾的蚊子感染過至少一次。瘧滌平這樣的藥物能起到作用，但副作用嚴重，所以一些美國大兵并沒有每天按時按量服用——后果可想而知。當時在巴布亞新幾內亞，一對人類頭骨下面的一塊標牌警告道：“這些人沒有服用瘧滌平”。

至少那個時候還可以獲得像樣的治療。蒂莫西·懷恩加德(Timothy Winegard)在他對蚊子歷史的生動敘述中寫道，縱觀人類歷史，在蚊子及其攜帶的疾病面前，大部分時間“我們都不堪一擊”。部分原因是無知。經年累月，死亡的嗡鳴不絕于耳，而早期人類卻一直將瘧疾及蚊子傳播的其他疾病歸咎于沼澤地釋放出的“瘴氣”。瘧疾曾在英格蘭東部的沼澤地帶奪走了超過20%的人的性命。19世紀后期，黃熱病摧毀了田納西州的孟菲斯市(Memphis)。古往今來所有的人口中，可能約有一半是因為蚊子而沒了命，難怪懷恩加德稱蚊子是“世界毀滅者”。

但他的書可不僅僅是對受害者的記錄。懷恩加德令人信服地論證了蚊子除了帶來死亡，還塑造了人類生活。蚊子救羅馬人于漢尼拔的大軍，也讓歐洲擺脫了蒙古人的鐵蹄。如果說瘧疾改變了人類歷史，那么人類對瘧疾的免疫力也一樣。歐洲人認為那些對瘧疾產生了一定免疫力的非洲人非常適合在新大陸做奴隸。后來風水輪流轉了。“一開始他們戰斗力會很強，但很快就會生病，一個接一個地死去。”杜桑·盧維杜爾(Toussaint Louverture)對被派到海地鎮壓他領導的奴隸革命的法國人做了這樣的預測。他說中了。被派到這個殖民地上的6.5萬名士兵中約有85%死于蚊子傳播的疾病。海地贏得了獨立。

這般穿梭于時空中的講述讀起來可能累人，但懷恩加德是一個很能抓住人心的向導，特別是他能把軼事和分析熔于一爐。其中有一個精彩片段講述了一個離奇的陰謀：一名南方聯盟的狂熱支持者曾企圖讓林肯染上黃熱病;另一個段落解釋了古埃及人用尿液沐浴來對抗瘧疾發燒的習慣。(不過有些抖機靈的話效果不怎么樣。例如，將18世紀的加勒比地區稱為蚊子的“自助晚宴”有點油嘴滑舌，把蚊子比作“游擊隊”也有點過分了。)

但懷恩加德的敘述大部分都扣人心弦，尤其是最后關于現代的蚊子那幾章。藥物和殺蟲劑已使瘧疾的發病率大幅降低，但蚊子本身也可以迅速產生免疫力，每年仍然奪去80多萬人的性命。雖然有一天基因編輯可能會讓蚊子變得無害，甚至能徹底消滅它們，但像寨卡這樣由蚊子傳播的病毒近來已經蔓延到新的地區。世界的毀滅者氣數未盡。

環球網校友情提示：以上內容是2020年高級商務英語翻譯練習題八，點擊下面按鈕免費下載更多精品備考資料。