Mosquitoes Cure Paralysis

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 45, 16 May 1927, Page 7

Mosquitoes Cure Paralysis

Stinging Patients Back to Health Doctors working under the panel system received recently from the British Ministry of Health a little circular which gave information about the experiments with mosquitoes in the cure of general paralysis. “Teams of mosquitoes are now available for use,” said this document. Thus the mosquito, once the carrier of death and disease, takes its place among the curative agents at the service of mankind. This is the result of the experiments of Dr. K. W. Scripture, which established the fact that the germ producing general paralysis and the germ producing malaria were mortal enemies. Will the treaement of diseases produced by known organic intruders be conducted in future entirely by setting germ to work against germ in the patient’s blood-stream? There are medical men who believe so. The great French sa\ant, Pasteur, was the first to prove that it is possible to inject a serum made from bacteria into a person suffering from a disease, so than an “army of healing” would be mobilised against the mischief-making microbes. This was the starting-point of much valuable work. For example, chronic catarrh is now treated in this way. the patient being inoculated instead of being put to bed with hot-water bottles and eucalyptus. Auckland specialists now use serum instead of drugs for the catarrh so prevalent here. Now comes Dr. Mosquito, with all the prestige of a Government department behind him, to work his will upon those afflicted with general paralysis. How will he be brought into action The patient about to be treated will be placed in gauze netting, only his head being outside. The “team” of mosquitoes will then be popped into the netting. This procedure will be repeated at stated intervals until the desired result is obtained and the patient is cured. The handling of these mosquitoes, charged as they are with the poison of malaria, will be an affair not without danger. Should a “team” escape, there might possibly be an outbreak of malaria. But proper precautions are being taken against this. Probably this new treatment of a disease that had baffled medical men for centuries will be counted by posterity as one of the most remarkable advances in the healing art made in our times.