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.

    535/594 page 497
    Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. He invited me to lecture on “ Malaria in Greece ” before the Oxford Medical Society, which I did on 9 November 1906 [83]. We raised £500 very quickly ; and, what was even better, found a most enthusiastic historical investigator—Mr. W. PI. S. Jones, afterwards Fellow of St. Catherine’s, Cambridge. Assisted by Mr. A. E. Shipley and others, he examined much ancient literature, and his book, Malaria, a neglected Factor in the History of Greece and Home, with an introduction by myself, appeared in 1907 (Macmillan & Bowes) ; and his Malaria and Greek History in 1909 [89]. Both confirm my conjectures. Savas came to stay with us at Liverpool in September 1906, and Sir Alfred Jones gave him a lunch on the 17th. The Greek League did some good work with quinine-distribution, and cleared malaria from the banks of the Ilissos at Athens by “ training ” that small but famous stream [91]. I visited Greece again in 1913 and 1917 (pages 513, 519). Mr. D. Steele was a remarkable man, who went to Copais from a Scottish farm, consolidated the company’s property there, and even conducted a small war against the “ hillmen ” in defence of it. He had a high opinion of the Greek peasantry. Personally I was disappointed in the state of the country. If the Greeks had used their climate, scenery, and historical associations as the Swiss have used their mountains they would have been the more prosperous for it; but the trains were few, the roads bad, the inns wretched and, instead of nursing its true interests, the nation seemed to abandon itself to a debauch of politicalism. But I was filled with enthusiasm, and in my lecture at Oxford figured Greece as Andromeda about to be saved from the devouring monster of the waters by the League as Perseus ; and, in accordance with my “ Heliconian Philo¬ sophy,” I exhorted the Greeks to return to the worship of Athene. Here is the peroration of my address—somewhat exalted, perhaps, but sincere. Talking of the Parthenon, I said : 4 4 And who was the god for whom that temple was built ■ which of all those gods, who are not dead as some imagine, but who live now and will live for ever, because they are the everlasting types of our own spirit ? That goddess, whose birth and victory were recorded on the pediments of the Parthenon ; who sprang, not from the common zygosis of Nature, but full-armed from the head of Zeus at the touch of Fire and
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