664 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



respect, the expenditure is fully justified both on economic and hygienic 

 grounds. 



A GREAT DEFAULT (Sir R. Ross) 



I have long intended to publish a short but consecutive review of certain 

 efforts of my own since 1899 for the practical reduction of malaria in British 

 dominions ; and the recent death of Sir William MacGregor, who helped me 

 largely in the work, now compels me to write the paper — not quite a pleasant 

 task. I should like to add a few personal memories of a good and great 

 man, as a duty to be discharged in his honour. 



The Right Honourable Sir William MacGregor, P.C., G.C.M.G., C.B., 

 M.D., LL.D., the son of a Scottish farmer, was born in 1847 and died in 

 July 1919. He took his M.D. at Aberdeen in 1874 and first served as Govern- 

 ment Medical Officer of the Seychelles, Mauritius, and Fiji. Very soon, 

 however, he was selected for general administrative work and became the 

 first Governor of British New Guinea (1895), an d then Governor of Lagos 

 (1899), Newfoundland (1904), and Queensland (1909). He retired in 1914, 

 and bought the property of Chapel-on-Leader, Berwickshire, where he died. 

 Lady MacGregor survived him only for a few months. 



I think that I must have met him first in 1899, when he was passing 

 through Liverpool on his way to Lagos. At that time I had just returned 

 from India, where I had recently ascertained that protozoal parasites, like 

 higher parasites, may be " metaxenous," that is, may live in two alternate 

 species of " hosts " — in other words I had shown that certain parasites of 

 malaria of men and birds reach their " definitive stage " in certain species of 

 mosquitoes (see also Science Progress, April 1917, pages 669-672, and 

 April 19 19, pp. 636-7). This meant, not only the finding of the exact 

 manner in which malaria is communicated from man to man, but also how 

 the disease may be prevented on a large scale. The various guilty species 

 of mosquitoes could now be easily identified by feeding them experimentally 

 on cases of malaria, and then, when we had studied their habits by the 

 usual means, we should be able to control them and the disease carried by 

 them wherever we wished to incur the comparatively small expense required. 

 On the voyage home in 1899 I had said to myself, " In two years we shall 

 stamp malaria out of every city and large town possessing Health Officers 

 and Sanitary Departments in British possessions." For the breeding-places 

 of the Anopheline mosquitoes consist generally of small pools or puddles of 

 certain types, mostly easily manageable by ordinary coolies instructed by 

 sanitary inspectors, or, in many other cases, by such minor engineering work 

 as any municipality or town, or even village-council, can do. I had spent 

 years of toil on the subject ; not because of its interest (because I prefer 

 other pursuits) nor for the sake of " pure science," but in order to relieve 

 human suffering. My success had been achieved by what I think was 

 almost a miracle of luck ; and now I gloried in imagination over what the 

 world was going to get for it all. Think of it : a disease which kills its 

 millions a year and torments its hundreds of millions ! 



This was not the dream of a visionary. I had served for eighteen years 

 in the Indian Medical Service, for more than two years of which I had been 

 employed by Government to reform the sanitation of a great Indian station 

 — hard, plain, practical work. I knew all about sanitary organisation, 

 drains, town-cleansing, sanitary engineering, houses, yards, sewers, official 

 procedure, and the rest of it ; and I had been studying the habits of mos- 

 quitoes for many more years. The thing could be done — almost everywhere : 

 wherever there were a white man to command and a few coolies to work : a 

 little work every day, a few extra pounds on the estimates, a trained engi- 

 neer and a larger sum occasionally, some good town ordinances, and a man 

 who was not a fool to co-ordinate measures and to keep statistics. A word 



