Volume 1

The prevention of malaria / by Ronald Ross ; with contributions by L.O. Howard [and others].

  • Ronald Ross
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The prevention of malaria / by Ronald Ross ; with contributions by L.O. Howard [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    61/770 page 37
    7] QUININE 37 Anophelines and other mosquitos specially interested them, and innumerable papers and works on the subject began to be poured out. The entomological results were invaluable. Whereas in 1898 only about a hundred species of Culicidae were known, we have now recognised about six hundred, which have been carefully described in valuable works by E. E. Austen, G. M. Giles, L. O. Howard, R. Blanchard, and especially in an exhaustive monograph, by F. V. Theobald, and by many others. Regarding the habits of the insects my findings have been generally confirmed, without very much really new matter being added. Some of the observers, being new to the subject, have laboriously recorded facts (such as the abundance of gnats near their breeding-places, or in ground-floors of houses, or in dark corners, or on dark surfaces, or their transportation by carriages, and so on) which, I think, were perfectly familiar to all who have lived much amongst them.1 Returning to the subject of prevention, we must now note that an important new method was suggested by R. Koch during his visit to Italy in 1898—namely, prevention by treat¬ ment of cases. This was tried at once by B. Gosio in Grosseto in Italy [1900]. Towards the autumn of 1899 Koch went with R. Pfeiffer and H. Kossel to Batavia, where he discovered his law regarding the frequency of infection in native children ; and in December proceeded to German New Guinea, where he success¬ fully used his method of prevention at Stephansort [1900]. This method is entirely different to the ancient one of drainage, or to my modification of it. It aims, not at the reduction of the carriers of the parasites in a locality, but at the reduction of the parasites themselves by the general and complete treatment by 1 Also many habits have been ascribed to mosquitos, which exist only in the imagination of the writers. Thus Nuttall says [1899] that Aaron suggested destroying mosquitos by placing small lamps in trays of petroleum over ponds or marshes round dwellings. The gnats, attracted by the light, would fall into the oil. In 1900 two Italian writers, one of whom is supposed to have led the way regarding the mosquito malaria theory, not only approved this absurdity, but added the suggestion that the lamps “be furnished with powerful (sic) reflectors turned away from the house.” I have never in my life seen mosquitos attracted by lamps.
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