Memoirs : with a full account of the great malaria problem and its solution / by Ronald Ross.

  • Ross, Ronald, Sir, 1857-1932.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Memoirs : with a full account of the great malaria problem and its solution / by Ronald Ross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sected two of these at once to watch the crescent-sphere- flagella metamorphosis. Nothing else was found, and the metamorphosis occurred in Mosquito 34, just as it did in Stegomyia and Culex. But I noted the peculiar eggs of the new type and described them as “ large and black, boat¬ shaped with central spines.” Here is the rough drawing of one from my notebook, page 106 : EGG OF DAPPLED-WINGED MOSQUITO. After this I killed the third “ uialariated ” Anopheles of 16 August (Mosquito 35), and on dissecting it found some “ peculiar vacuolated cells in stomach about 10 in diam.” But I added no further note about these cells, and do not remember to have thought much about them at the time. This was a mosquito of the third day after feeding, so that the blood in its stomach had been evacuated ; but the dissection was a poor one, and I possessed three more insects of the same batch which I proposed to examine on the morrow—in order to allow the supposed parasites in them to grow as large and as visible as possible. At that time I still credited Manson’s idea that mosquitoes feed only once and then die after laying their eggs on the water. I was rather disheartened at my results with the new species, but hoped for better things next day. The 20 August 1895—the anniversary of which I always call Mosquito Day—was, I think, a cloudy, dull, hot day. I went to hospital at 7 a.m., examined my patients, and attended to official correspondence ; but was much annoyed because my men had failed to bring any more larvae of the dappled-winged mosquitoes, and still more because one of my three remaining Anopheles had died during the night and had swelled up with decay. After a hurried breakfast at the Mess, I returned to dissect the cadaver (Mosquito 36), but found nothing new in it. I then examined a small Stegomyia, which happened to have been fed on Husein Khan on the same da}^ (the 16th) —Mosquito 87—which was also negative, of course. At about 1 p.m. I determined to sacrifice the seventh Anopheles (A. stephensi) of the batch fed on the 16th, Mosquito 38,