636 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



regarding the manner in which our men of science had helped us to repel German 

 air attacks during the war — men whose names were almost unknown to the 

 general public. The British magneto and plug were now the best in the world ; 

 and the output of the former in this country had risen from 1,140 in 1914 to 

 128,637 last year ; and of the latter from 5,000 to 182,148,000. 



Alan Milne : Some Reminiscences of an Important Movement (Sir R. Ross) 



The recent death of Mr. Alan Hay Milne, B.A., C.M.G., formerly Secretary of 

 the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (and of the Liverpool Chamber of Com- 

 merce), imposes upon me the duty of recording some appreciations of a friend who 

 really took a leading though little recognised part in a movement of considerable 

 Imperial importance — that of the prevention of malaria and the teaching of tropical 

 medicine. I cannot do so better than by giving a very brief narrative of the origin 

 and earlier development of the movement, which owed so much to him. 



In 1897-8 I had found in India that the parasites of malaria develop in certain 

 species of mosquitoes which carry them from infected persons and inoculate them 

 into healthy people. This was an event of some little consequence, because 

 malaria is the most ubiquitous disease in the tropics, rendering many of the most 

 fertile areas difficult of development, and killing, it is thought, over a million 

 persons annually in India alone. The logical result ought to have been that all 

 the large Departments of State connected with the tropics should have followed 

 up the investigations with vigour, and have applied them to the saving of human 

 life and health on the large scale. But at that time we were sunk in a state ot 

 absolute intellectual sloth, and a discovery of this kind created much less interest 

 in the public mind than the result of a horse-race or cricket-match In 1898-9, 

 however, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, then at the head of the Colonial Office, did 

 move a little in the matter, at the instance of Dr. (now Sir Patrick) Manson ; 

 but instead of compelling the Colonies to maintain a proper organisation for the 

 work, he suggested only that private persons should be patriotic enough to start 

 schools of tropical medicine in various parts of England at their own expense ! 

 The result was that two such schools were inaugurated, with the help of small 

 subsidies, in London and Liverpool. Alan Milne was the secretary of the latter, 

 and it was largely owing to his tact and energy that enough money was obtained 

 for the purpose from public subscriptions (see SCIENCE PROGRESS, January 1914, 

 for details) to pay mean salaries to the workers — who have really been the sufferers. 



The moving spirit in Liverpool was the late Rubert Boyce, Professor of 

 Pathology at the University College, who persuaded his friend the late Alfred 

 Jones, a shipowner, to provide a nucleus by subscribing .£300 a year to the Liver- 

 pool School for a few years. Early in 1899, on completing my work in India, I 

 reported to the Indian Government my method of banishing malaria by "mosquito- 

 reduction" — the method subsequently adopted with such great success by the 

 French at Ismailia and by the Americans in Panama, and now shown to be by far 

 the most practicable method for large populations. But no notice was taken of 

 my report, and I could obtain no assurance from the authorities that I should be 

 allowed to continue the malaria work ; and I therefore wished to leave the Indian 

 Medical Service, and reached England in March on leave. Boyce now asked me 

 to join his proposed institution, which I did. 



Immediately on going to Liverpool I suggested a series ot expeditions to West 

 Africa in order to study and prevent the malaria which gave that region the name 

 of the " white man's grave." Boyce and Milne collected the small but necessary 



