Species sanitation of malaria in the Netherlands East Indies (1913-1942)--an example of applied medical history?

To the World Health Organization malaria remains "one of the world's most important public health concerns". During the post-eradication era of the 1980s there was no clear answer to the following question: what kind of intervention could be effective against malaria in the 'roll-back malaria' programme? In this situation there were also calls for an 'applied history of medicine', since the anti-malaria programmes during the pre-eradication era might help overcome the crisis of finding an appropriate way to fight malaria. At this point the concept of species sanitation was considered. Developed in the 1920s in the former Netherlands East Indies the thrust of this concept is that anopheles, as obligatory vectors of malaria, have species-specific breeding sites; when these sites are sanitised, malaria is deprived of its ecological preconditions. This double question - the history of species sanitation and the possibility of an applied history of medicine - is the starting point of this paper. The results of the historical analysis are that in terms of the biological, technical, economical, social and political conditions, species sanitation remains limited to a few locally specified exceptions. The attempt to find answers in history demonstrates that an evaluation of historical anti-malaria measures can be helpful in determining the fundamental elements of a given situation necessary for an effective malaria control programme.