SEARCHING FOR REMEDY FOR MALARIA SCOURGE.

Shannon News, 29 November 1929, Page 1

SEARCHING FOR REMEDY FOR MALARIA SCOURGE.

SIR RONALD ROSS’ LABOURS.

SCIENTIST EXPERIMENTS

ON MOSQUITOES

The prevalence, of malaria in many parts of the Empire makes it of importance to British subjects the world over, and the scientific history of the disease shows that British investigators have played a predominating part, in elucidating most of the baffling problems which malaria presents.

The name of Sir Ronald Ross is justly honoured in' connection with the earliest work on the malarial parasite, says the medicail correspondent of the Morning Poet. Malaria is caused by a parasite which lives in t!j£ blood of the infected individual and is' conveyed from patient to patient by a species of mosquit.oe. Earlier workers.had discovered the parasite in the human subject, but it w'as Ross who, after a long series of patient observations, found evidence of its existence in the mosquito. This work was reported in 1895, and in 1898 Ross published an account Of further work by which he had been able to trace a form of malarial infection in birds, which was transmitted by mosquitoes. This work on malaria in birds was carried out in India in most difficult circumstances. Sir Ronald Ross records that the bulk of his investigations were done with an old microscope with a clacked eye-piece, while tumblers and medicine bottles served for apparatus. Even at the ‘'laboratory” which was provided for him later he had to supply his own microscopes and even pay his own assistants, while books of any kind could rarely be obtained. Yet with these poor facilities the whole of the very difficult technique of the experiments on mosquitoes was establish ed.

The methods of keeping the mosquitoes alive, of feeding them, of dissecting them and examining them were worked out so fully that with this information about malaria in. birds available it was a comparatively easy step to carry out pareilel observations on human malaria. This Sir Ronald Ross would undoubtedly have done had no: his duties sent him to investigate an other disease ' elsewhere, and consequently his work was carried out in the first place by Professor Grass! and hi.colleagues in their well-cquipp'.u laboratories in Rome.

* /flic “cold storage” of British troops in India—the withdrawal of u many as possible from malarious stations to the hills during the int'ectiv. season —is the new method employed ti lessen malaria attacks in the country Idcutenant-Colonel J. Mackenzie,' who was director of hygiene and pathology at army headquarters in India, ano who has written a book on “Army Health in India,” states that through out the civilisation’ of the past the “captain of the armies of disease’ had taken incalculable toll of huma'i life and treasure, destroyed armies, de populated ‘ cities, arrested the develop ment of ..vast territories, and brought empires to decay. The number of hi victims was beyond computation. In India alone 100,000,000 were attacker ('very vear, and the annual loss of tli■ dead was from one and a-half to two millions.

A study of the statistics of the las' 100 years led irresistibly to the eon elusion that, allowing for certain fac-

Cm outline of the medical history I the British Army in India was, in

Lie main, the curve of malaria incidence. Cholera' had come and gone, ‘.■.meric fevers had risen and declined; malaria remained. “Cold storage” introduced in 1925, and "partial-mos-quito-proofing, carried out in 1920, had, however, shown that the problem was not insoluble.