The campaign against malaria / Major Ronald Ross.

  • Ross, Ronald, Sir, 1857-1932.
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The campaign against malaria / Major Ronald Ross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    1/10 (page 1)
    Ik flotml Institution of (Sreat Iritain. WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, Friday, May 7, 1909. Sir Francis Laking, Bart. G.C.V.O. M.D. LL.D. Vice-President, in the Cbaiv. Major Ronald Ross, C.B. LL.D. D.Sc. F.R.S. F.R.C.S. Nobel Laureate. The Campaign against Malaria. More than nine years ago I had the privilege of addressing the Royal Institution* on the subject of my researches on the mode of infection in malarial fever; and I am now called upon to describe what has been done, or not done, in various countries to utilise for the alleviation of the disease the information then obtained. The ancients appear to have recognised, not only the principal symptoms of malarial fever, but the fact that it is often connected with marshes : and more recently many authors ascribed this fact toN the existence of poisonous vapours which they supposed are given off by stagnant waters, or even by the soil. Still later, a series of patho- logical studies led to the discovery by Laveran in 1880 that the malady is produced by vast numbers of minute protozoal parasites of the red blood-corpuscles ; and students of the subject now con- jectured that these organisms originally inhabited the marshes, and infect man through air or drinking water. My own studies, however, commenced eighteen years ago, and confirmed and extended by many workers, showed that the parasites are carried from man to man by certain species of Culicidre (gnats or mosquitoes) ; and that it is these carrying agents, and not the parasites themselves, which live in the marshes. Thus malarial fever was now proved to be merely a parasitic disease, the infection of which is carried from man to man by the agency of certain water-breeding insects. As described in my previous lecture, the broad principles of this theorem were really fully established by the end of the year 1898. Although numerous minor details still required study—such as the precise species of mosquitoes which carry the infection in various countries, the exact habits of each species, and so on—yet I held that these questions could now be elucidated without difficulty in the ordinary course of work, and that we were already in a position to apply the discovery at once to the saving of human health and life. I propose, therefore, to take up the story again from tins point. * March 2, 1900. A