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.

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    hours’ lecture to the Societe Medicale of Mauritius—in the middle of a raging thunderstorm ; on 29 January a lecture before the Governor at Curepipe ; and on 8 February another (I believe) to the Mayor (Dr. Laurent) and the Councillors of Port Louis. The planters entertained us everywhere, and we lunched with the Hon. M. Leclezio, his wife, and their eighteen sons and daughters, all together. On 20 January we gave a picnic tea to the Governor, Miss Lane, and most of the notable ladies and men of Mauritius in the middle of the deadly Phoenix Marsh near Vacoas !—and we all afterwards distributed charity to some scores of the sick Indian children who lived there— the marsh was drained a little later and the malaria vanished. A battalion of British troops had arrived here just before we did. They had all been provided with excellent War Office mosquito bed-nets ; but these had not been hung, because the local authorities disputed as to who should provide the hooks ; and the result was that there were seventy-one cases of malaria, five deaths, and many invalidings, costing thousands of pounds ! I judged that malaria had been brought to Mauritius and Reunion in 1866 (simultaneously) by the intro¬ duction of A. costalis, the Sierra Leone death-bearer, the common Anopheles, A. mauritianus, being innocent. My final scheme for malaria-reduction was estimated to cost 135,000 rupees annually—about £9,000—or 0’36 rupees per head of popula¬ tion and 1*2% of revenue. At last the sad time came for us, weary but happy, to say farewell to our friends (whose names will be found in my Report). The French newspapers complimented and caricatured me; the doctors gave us a great lunch; the Societe Medicale made me its president ; and we embarked on the s.s. Melbourne (which had brought me) on 25 February. But we were put into quarantine for a whole week in a square dock at Point de Galets, Reunion— intense heat, mosquitoes, and thirty French babies on board all crying night and day ! Then, just as we were to leave, a cyclone commenced. We reached London on 28 March 1908. There I bought a four-seated Minerva car, which finally brought me to Liverpool, still alive. Now for some winding-up notes. The “ vacuum-theorists ” (page 489) were still active ; and I therefore attempted in my Mauritius Report [87] a mathematical analysis of the various factors which must influence the time-to-time variation of malaria in a locality. The difference-equation showing the effect of each factor was obtained ; and, though I could not then solve it (the mathematicians did not help me), it was 33
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