480 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.84 



and his results were announced in July, 1898. As Doctor Low puts 

 it, " But the ' mugwumps ' had not finished with Ross." He was sent 

 away, this time to Assam, to study kala-azar, and while he was gone 

 Grassi, Bignami, and Bastianelli in Rome verified the discovery for 

 human malaria and Anopheles. Doctor Low concludes, " This would 

 not have been done at the time but for Ross' work — the Italian re- 

 searches followed his, and were not independent of them." 



Ross tells the story very effectively and rather at length in the 

 first chapter of his big book " The Prevention of Malaria " (London, 

 John Murray, 1910). This book carries 330 pages by Ross himself, 

 followed by 330 more by special contributors, the latter part being 

 accompanied by many plates. The writer furnished one of these con- 

 tributions at Ross' request. 



PERSONALIA 



I have been very fortunate in meeting very many men who have 

 accomplished things in medical entomology, not only in the United 

 States but in other countries. I knew Dr. A. F. A. King very well. 

 When he was filled with the idea of the relation between malaria 

 and mosquitoes in the early i88o's and before he read his extended 

 paper on this subject before the Philosophical Society of Washington 

 (afterwards published in the Popular Science Monthly) he came 

 down to the entomological offices in the Department of Agriculture 

 and discussed the question at some length with Professor Riley and 

 myself. I am sorry to say that we gave him no encouragement. The 

 idea appeared to us to be altogether too farfetched. It is worth not- 

 ing also (I have referred to it in my Sketch History of Medical Ento- 

 mology) that when he read his paper before the Philosophical Soci- 

 ety, although the late Dr. John S. Billings and Dr. Robert Fletcher, 

 both very keen medical men, were there, there was no helpful dis- 

 cussion. Doctor King was a successful gynecologist and obstetrician 

 who lectured at the Medical College of the Columbian University 

 (now George Washington University) and acted as Registrar of the 

 College. 



Then too, I knew Theobald Smith. We were at Cornell together. 

 While he was engaged upon his investigation of the cause of the 

 cattle-tick disease we occasionally discussed the matter. His demon- 

 strations (1889-1892) of intraglobular parasites in Texas fever and 

 their transmission by the second generation of cattle tick was revolu- 

 tionary in its character, but his results do not seem to have been 

 known by Laveran or by Ross at the times when their discoveries 

 were announced. This happens to have been the only work in con- 

 nection with medical entomology that was done by Doctor Smith, but 



