566 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



in South America, and even on the Roman Campagna, a home of 

 malaria, the poor peasants long ago connected the idea of mosquitoes 

 with the idea of fevers. 



But there were a few men before Pasteur's discovery of pathogenic 

 bacteria, and long before anyone had dreamed of disease-carrying 

 protozoa with alternate hosts, who had imagined in a way the con- 

 nection between mosquitoes and yellow fever. Louis D. Beauperthuy, 

 a French physician long resident in the West Indies, as early as 

 1853 elaborately argued that yellow fever is conveyed to man by 

 mosquitoes, but he supposed that the insects carried the virus from 

 decomposing matter which they had visited. Even earlier, in 1848, 

 Dr. Josiah Nott, of Mobile, had contended in a published article 

 that the specific cause of yellow fever exists in some form of insect 

 life. 



The first decade of our 50 years was almost passed when the first 

 great discovery in medical entomology was made, a discovery which, 

 although it had no connection with bacteria or protozoa, led directly 

 to others, and in fact opened the way to the vast field of discovery 

 in which many men of many countries have worked and are now 

 working. This was the discovery by Dr. Patrick Manson of the 

 full life round of certain filarial worms, in which certain mosquitoes 

 play a vital part, So revolutionary was this work and so unimagi- 

 nable in its results even to intelligent practitioners that the late 

 medical inspector, J. S. Ames, of the United States Navy, has told 

 me how the Navj^ surgeons of different nations, coming together by 

 chance on the China station, " used to chaff crazy Pat Manson about 

 his mosquito filaria ideas." Manson's discovery was brilliant and 

 revolutionary. It was the result of long work under trying condi- 

 tions and in the face of a discouraging lack of interest and even 

 serious doubts as to his perfect saneness on the part of his colleagues, 

 and he deserves even greater honor than was given to him, although 

 he has been hailed as a pioneer and a great leader by the medical 

 profession and the scientific world at large. His work led directly 

 to the great achievement of Ross in regard to malaria. 



But before we take up Ross's wonderful work we must for an in- 

 stant refer to an extraordinary paper by A. F. A. King, a Washington 

 physician with a speculative mind, who published in 1883 an extended 

 argument to prove that malaria is carried by mosquitoes. As a 

 closely reasoned argument this paper was as nearly conclusive as 

 would be possible without actual experimental evidence. But the 

 time was not ripe for the acceptance of this idea, and laboratory 

 technique and microbiological science were not far enough advanced 

 to allow even promising confirmatory experimentation. I am inclined 

 to pity myself when I remember my incredulous frame of mind when 

 Doctor King broached his theory to the late C. V. Riley and myself 



