570 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



announcement, many workers attacked the problem and confirmation 

 rapidly followed. The complete life history of the parasite was 

 worked out and the mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles were definitely 

 shown to be the sole means by which malaria is transmitted from 

 man to man. The Italian workers, Grassi, Bignami, and Bastianelli, 

 began to work along the same lines shortly after Ross had begun his 

 investigation and for a long time contended that the credit for the 

 establishment of relations between Anopheles and human malaria 

 belonged to them, since Ross's first work was done with mosquitoes 

 of the genus Culex and a malarial disease of sparrows. The Nobel 

 Prize, however, was awarded to Ross in 1902 after a careful ex- 

 amination of the matter of priority and of late the Italians have 

 advanced no claim. In fact, talking with Angelo Celli in 1910, I 

 jocularly referred to his " old friend Ross " (since Ross had been par- 

 ticularly harsh in his criticism of the claims of the Italian school ) 

 and Celli replied to the effect that it was all smoothed over and 

 that he had contributed a chapter to Ross's big book on malaria 

 which had then just been published. It seems that Ross knew noth- 

 ing of Theobald Smith's discovery of the blood inhabiting protozoan 

 of the Texas fever of cattle and of its established vital relation with 

 the cattle tick, so that his work with malaria was absolutely original 

 with him and so far as he knew was the first accomplishment of this 

 nature so far as protozoan parasites were concerned. The importance 

 of his work can not be overestimated. It was one of the great dis- 

 coveries in biological science applied to medicine and w 7 ill eventually 

 mean more for the health and happiness of mankind than almost any 

 discovery that has ever been made. Ross, like Manson, was knighted 

 and has lived to enjoy many honors and to see in many directions 

 the vast fruits of his discovery. 



Practical work based on Ross's discovery was immediately begun 

 in different parts of the world. He, himself, headed an expedition 

 to Lagos on the West Coast of Africa and by putting antimalaria 

 measures into effect reduced the malaria incidence very greatly. 

 Elsewhere the same thing was done. The governors of the British 

 colonies, especially the authorities of the Crown Colonies, did not 

 act with sufficient rapidity and enthusiasm to satisfy Ross, who felt, 

 with his crusader's spirit, that they should have shown more. He 

 published a little book called " Mosquito Brigades " in 1901, in which 

 he gave explicit directions, as a result of his field-work, as to the best 

 means of organizing and operating antimalaria campaigns, especially 

 in the Tropics. In this book he said severe things about the dilatori- 

 ness of British officialism in sanitary matters. Three years previously 

 I had published a bulletin on mosquitoes and antimosquito work in 

 which I referred to Ross's discovery and detailed the best measures 

 for fighting mosquitoes, and a number of bits of experimental work 



