CULTURE OF MOSQUITOES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 August 1938, Page 4

CULTURE OF MOSQUITOES

USE IN NERVOUS THERAPY. Mosquitoes thrive best on powdered dog biscuit, Professor -Sir Rickard Christophers, leading authority on malaria, has discovered. He described the work of his experimental malarial unit conducted in a shed on the roof of the London School of Tropical Medicine. In glass bowls and net-covered cages, he said, 3000 mosquitoes had been raised from egg grafts every fortnight during the past six years. A thousand mosquito larvae eat a teaspoon of powdered dog biscuit a day and the rate of-growth is colossal, corresponding, roughly to a baby' becoming the size of an elephant in a fortnight. . The malarial unit works in conjunction with the Ministry of Health department, which is concerned with malaria therapy in nervous disease of the insane. “The mental condition of patients has been remarkably bettered by giving then) malaria, then curing them,” said Sir Rickard Christophers. “Between 25 and 50 per cent of patients had been notably helped.” Mosquitoes are being used to infect patients in most of the large hospitals, and parasites are sent to Rome, Antwerp, Rumania and -America.