There wasn't a great deal of information regarding consumer safety and health back in the sixties. Hell, drinking hard whiskey and smoking was promoted and sometimes even recommended.
One hasn't hasn't changed in the last ten thousand years, damn mosquitos are still a darn nuisance. I recall when Everett Byrd forced me to read the book Absalom Absalom, there was a part where it talked about how folks would rub mud all other their bodies to combat the skeeter bites.
Well, in McRae Georgia in the late sixties, someone rode around in an old army jeep spraying concentrated DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) to make going outside bearable and not suffer 100 bites every evening. End of it is, as kids we chased the Skeeter-Man on our bikes and relished to moments of riding in a cloud of toxic chemicals. The smell stayed on us for hours, and we were fully convinced that the closer you got, the better it stuck on ya, those really did keep the skeeters off of ya.
