Mosquitoes and malaria / by Jacobus C. Faure.

  • Faure, Jacobus C.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mosquitoes and malaria / by Jacobus C. Faure. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and multiply as before. Thus the life cycle is completed. It will be noted that it is essential for the parasite of malaria to pass through a mosquito in order to spread from a diseased to a healthy person. HISTORICAL. Malaria or ‘‘ miasm ’’ has been known for many centuries, and for a long time philosophers and medical men have speculated upon the cause and method of infection of the dreaded disease. As soon as the disease was carefully observed it was noticed that it was closely associated with marshes. Hence the word ‘‘ mal-aria,’’ denoting bad or swampy air. The idea that malarial fever was due to breathing the vapours of the marshes has through many generations become firmly established in the human mind. Even to-day there are many men who ought to know better, who still firmly believe init. Another belief was that the fever came from the vapours that arose from the earth when excavations were made. Both the marsh and excavation theories are now known to have been partly founded on fact. The dreaded malaria was and still is closely associated with swamps, but the reason is that Anopheles, the carrier of the disease, breeds in swamps and pools and collections of water in excavation works. ‘The vapours arising from the marshes or excavations have nothing to do with the disease. It will probably take a good many generations before the facts of the mosquito-borne nature of malaria will be generally known and accepted. The relation of mosquitoes to disease was suggested by Nott as far back as 1848, and several other students of yellow fever and malaria mentioned mosquitoes as the probable transmitting agents during the period from 1850 to 1897. It was not until the latter date, however, that the mosquito theory of the transmission of malaria was finally established by Ross in India. After Ross had found the parasites of malaria in the Anopheles mosquito, it was shown by direct experiments that the mosquito carried the disease from the malarial patient to healthy persons. Mosquitoes were fed upon malarial patients, and subsequently allowed to bite a healthy person who was protected from other mosquitoes. After a regular incubation period a typical case of malaria developed. One of the striking cases was that of two gentlemen who were infected in London—where no malaria ordinarily occurs, by being bitten by Anopheline mosquitoes brought from Italy. <A great deal of indirect proof of the relation of mosquitoes to malaria has been furnished by people living in highly malarious localities with perfect safety by protecting themselves from mosquitoes. The anti-mosquito campaigns carried on in many parts of the world have given conclusive proof that a region can be freed from malaria by preventing the breeding of mosquitoes. The sanitary measures employed at Panama on the canal works have given the world a fine example of what can be done along the lines of anti- mosquito work. The thousands of canal workers with their families are now living in safety in a locality that has always been known as a hotbed of malaria and yellow fever. The methods employed were, in a general way, screening of houses and prevention of the breeding of mosquitoes. OTHER ASPECTS OF THE Mosquito PROBLEM. _ There are other reasons, besides the danger from malarial infec- tion, why definite systematic work should be done in South Africa,
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