The prevention of malaria.

  • Ross, Ronald, Sir, 1857-1932.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The prevention of malaria. 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.

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    cases, apparently, were experiments made to test the point. Later, when it was observed that malaria may sometimes occur where there is no marsh, the hypothesis of the paludic miasma was extended to that of the telluric miasma, according to which the poison exists not only in marshes but anywhere in suitable soil, from which it rises at night or when the soil is disturbed. This speculation, for it is nothing more, is not quite dead even yet, though the observation which originated it is easily ex- plained otherwise. The word malaria (ma/' aria or bad air) is derived from it. 3. Discovery of the Parasites. — Last century, however, pathological science was no longer content with mere guesses at the truth, but began to demand strict microscopical and experimental evidence. Applied to paludism, this method gave an early reward. In 1847, H. Meckel discovered innumerable black granules in the blood of an insane patient; and the discovery was subsequently confirmed and amplified by Dlauhy, Virchow, Heschl, Planer and Arnstein—the granules now being known under the name of the paludic pigment, or melanin, or haematozoin (Sambon).1 For a long time they were thought to be due to a chemical action of the paludic miasma on the red cells of the blood. About the same time many laborious attempts were made to discover some animal or vegetable organism which lives in marshes and produces paludism. As long ago as 1846 Rasori (cited by S. Calandruccio) made an extraordinary prediction on this subject. For many years, he said, I have held the opinion that the intermittent fevers are produced by parasites that cause the successive paroxysms of fever by their repro- duction, which occurs periodically more or less rapidly according to their species—and this has proved to be exactly true. Many writers attributed the disease to various marsh-growing vegetables. In 1862 Salisbury in particular, after considerable 1 I suggest the name Plasmodin, which is still more exact.