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OBITUARY 



A. W. BACOT 



The death of Arthur William Bacot, Entomologist to the Lister 

 Institute of Preventive Medicine, took place in Egypt on April 12th 

 last. Bacot had gone out to Cairo, earlier in the year, at the request of 

 the Egyptian Government to investigate problems connected with the 

 aetiology of typhus fever. It is now a well known fact that this disease 

 is transmitted from one human being to another through the agency of 

 the body louse, and great advances have been made in its control by the 

 energetic eradication of that t)bjectionable insect. There are, however, 

 still important links in the chain of evidence with regard to the exact 

 means by which the louse is able to infect man with the disease, 

 notwithstanding the large amount of experimental work which was 

 undertaken during the War. The great prevalence of typhus fever in 

 Egypt rendered it urgent that further investigations should be carried 

 out and, when the choice fell upon Bacot to conduct researches on the 

 entomological aspect of the problem, the Egyptian Government secured 

 the services of an investigator uniquely qualified for the task. Mr Bacot 

 possessed great skill as a manipulator, together with a wide experience 

 of insect-borne diseases, and of typhus fever in particular. These 

 qualifications were coupled with a sterling honesty of character, which 

 led him to subject every conclusion which he formulated to the most 

 rigid tests which he could devise. His work in consequence is of a very 

 high scientific merit, and of quite exceptional trustworthiness. 



Bacot was born in 1866, but was not educated for a scientific career, 

 and he became a clerk with a commercial firm in the city. He remained 

 in this capacity for a number of years, devoting his leisure to observing 

 and rearing Lepidoptera, which had interested him from an early age. 

 He was never a collector in the ordinary sense: problems relating to the 

 bionomics and getetics of his favourite order mainly occupied his atten- 

 tion, and he contributed various notes and papers dealing with these 

 aspects of his subject. Bacot eventually relinquished his office career 

 and was appointed on the staff of the Lister Institute in 1911. His first 

 researches in medical entomology were concerned with the bionomics of 

 rat fleas, which were undertaken in connection with the work of the 

 Indian Plague Commission. In 1913, in conjunction with Martin, he 

 demonstrated that an important method of transmission of bubonic 

 plague takes place through the medium of the proboscis of the flea. 

 When that insect becomes gorged with the blood of an infected rat, the 

 plague Bacillus increases to such an extent within the gut that the 

 organism forms a mass that plugs the entrance to the stomach of the 



