644 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



INSECTS AND DISEASE MOSQUITOES AND 



MALARIA.* 



Br Pkofessor A. F. A. KING, M. D. 



THE animalcular, or insect, origin of disease is not a new idea. It 

 was suggested by Linnaeus, by Kircher, and by Nyander, but gained 

 little ground. It received a new impetus after the publications of 

 Ehrenberg on the Infusoria. Later, it received attention in Bradley's 

 work on " The Plague of Marseilles," in Dr. Drake's books on " Epi- 

 demic Cholera " and on " The Topography and Diseases of the Missis- 

 sippi Valley," as well as in Sir Henry Holland's " Medical Notes," and 

 other works. 



More recently the researches of Dr. Patrick Manson in China, Dr. 

 Bancroft in Australia, Dr. J. R. Lewis in India, and Dr. Sonsino in 

 Egypt, have tended to show that the mosquito " acts as the interme- 

 diary host of Filar ia sanguinis hominis" and is thus indirectly instru- 

 mental in the production of chyluria, elephantiasis, lymph-scrotum, 

 etc. (London " Medical Times and Gazette," January 12, 1878, p. 69 ; 

 September 7, 1878, p. 275 ; December 28, 1878, p. 731 ; and June 4, 

 1881, p. 615). 



Still later, M. le Dr. Ch. Finlay has hypothetically considered the 

 mosquito an agent of transmission of yellow fever (" El mosquito hipo- 

 teticamente considerado como agente de transmission de la fiebre 

 amarilla," Havana, 1881 ; and " Pathogonia de la fiebre amarilla," 

 1882). These papers were communicated to l'Academie royale des 

 sciences medicales, physiques et naturelles at the dates mentioned. 

 A review of them, by Dr. A. Corre, appears in the " Archives de med. 

 Navale," tome xxxix, pp. 67-70, 1883, Paris. (See also " Lancet," 1878, 

 i, p. 69.) 



Viewed in the light of our modern " germ theory " of disease, the 

 punctures of proboscidian insects, like those of Pasteur's needles, 

 deserve consideration, as probable means by which bacteria and other 

 germs may be inoculated into human bodies, so as to infect the blood 

 and give rise to specific fevers. It has long ago been demonstrated 

 that "malignant pustule" is produced in man by the bite of a fly 

 (" British Medical Journal," January 24, 1863, p. 239). Dr. Budd, in 

 the article just quoted, refers to the greater frequency of this disease 

 in hot, dry summers where insect life is active and teeming ; and this, 

 he thinks, would go far to explain the greater frequency of the malig- 

 nant pustule in Burgundy than in England and the north of France, 



* Abstract of a paper on " The Prevention of Malarial Disease, illustrating, inter alia, 

 the Conservative Function of Ague," read before the Philosophical Society of Washing- 

 ton, February 10, 1882. For another paper, on "The Conservative Design of Organic 

 Disease," see this journal for June, 1873. 



