Memoirs : with a full account of the great malaria problem and its solution / by Ronald Ross.

  • Ronald Ross
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Memoirs : with a full account of the great malaria problem and its solution / by Ronald Ross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    533/594 page 495
    Cardamatis, a diligent worker at malaria. Then on 28 May, accompanied by the latter and by Mr. Steele, we took the train past Tanagra and Thebes and the Sphingion to the Copaic Plain—formerly a lake, now a great cultivated expanse dotted with villages and farms, and surrounded by Helicon and other mountains, with Parnassus gleaming in the distance—just as my prophetic eye saw it years before (page 48). We lived in the company’s house at the northern foot of Helicon in a beauti¬ ful grove—which is described in my Setting Sun [116] under the figure of Pallas Athene’s garden : Here in Her deep and dusky dell The silent cypress groweth well. Along the lawns of level grass The tinkling streamlets pause and pass Pierian, nor thy Hippocrene More bubbling-beauteous to the scene. To their low notes the nightingale Enlayeth her long-linked wail Of tongue-deprived Philomel, What time the lone star looms his light Upon the purple brow of night, And fragrant pine-odours embark Within the deep-endonjon’d dark— Like memories. But it was here, alas, that I committed my great crime— almost as bad as that of the Ancient Mariner. Nightingales are delightful in the evenings, but if they perpetrate their lyrics (as I have done in this book) at inconvenient times, just outside one’s bedroom all night long, they are fatiguing. Next night, both my wife and Steele wondered what had become of them. I will not describe the deed ; but one who throws stones at nightingales on the flanks of Helicon can never hope to become a poet ! After we had found numbers of infected people and pools at Moulki, the neighbouring village, we examined Thebes—where there was much less malaria on the Rock. Then we visited the oracle of Trophonius and the springs of Lethe and Mnemosyne at Livadia, where many Greek doctors called upon me—intelligent men, some of whom spoke English ; and, lastly, I investigated Boeotian Orchomenos, once a city of rich traders but now a miserable village in which almost every child had an enormous spleen due to malaria. The process of examining children’s spleens in villages is always amusing. When you first arrive they run away shrieking, the dogs bark, the fowls cackle, and irate mothers stand at their doors. Then one of your attendants catches one of the children and brings it forcibly to you, and you impress a penny into its dirty little palm, let it go, and smoke a cigarette.
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