ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS, MAY, 1904. 



The inontlily meeting of the Ko.yal So- 

 ciet}- of Tasmania was held on Mondaj^ 

 evening. His Excellency the Li&ut.-Go- 

 vernor. Sir John Bodds, presided. There 

 ■was a large attendance of members and 

 mjembers' friends, many ladies being pre- 

 sent. 



Mr. Thc'S. Stephens said it Avas his duty 

 as well as his privilege, as senior vice- 

 president and the eldiesc member of the 

 Council pregent, to bid His Excellency 

 •welcome. They regretted very much tne 

 loss of their late president, Sir Arthur 

 H'avelock, but they, a.s fellows of the 

 Eoyal Societ}', were onl}^ too glad to wel- 

 come, in his place, one who had filled 

 the same chair before, and one who had 

 always taken a lively intere^st in the busi- 

 ness of the societj'. (Applause.) 



Sir John DodcLs said he thanked mem- 

 bers most gratefully for the kind words 

 of welcome which Mr. Stephens had 

 spoken to him on their behalf. He a'- 

 sured them that he accepted the words 



• of welcome with feelings of gratification, 

 having the knowledge that they thought 

 what he had been able to do was worthy 

 of comment in Hiat way. (Applause.) 



An apology was received for the ab- 

 sence of Bishop Mercer. 



New Members. 

 Dr. Elkington, Dr. Gerard Smith, and 

 Mr. E. C. Anthony were unanimously 

 elected members. 



Paper. 

 Dr. Elkington read a paper on ^lome 

 Eeiations of Insects to Human Disease.'' 

 He said the subject upon which he -^ad 

 been asked to address them was one 

 which had, within the past six years, 

 j)roduced a profound alteration in several 

 branches of science. In Tasmania they 

 ■were, fortuuatelj^ free from those 

 scourges of humanity which were known 

 to depend for their spread upon the 



• agency of irusect life, but even with us 

 the problem was not whollj- one of out- 

 side interest, as he would" endeavour to 

 show in relation to typhoid. In ^^^is 



>case, however, the method of conveyance 

 was purely mechanical, being due to par- 

 ticles of infected matter clinging to cne 

 legs and body of flies and other injects, 

 and subsequently deposited upon food 

 material, whence it was taken into ^ue 

 alimentary canal of the victim. It was 

 advisable therefore to clearly distinguish 

 between the two methods by v.-hich in- 

 sects play a part in spreading disease 

 amongst human beings; whether (a) as 



•carrying agents pure and simple, the in- 

 fecting agent undergoing no change, and 

 not being dependent on the insect in anj'' 

 way; and (b) as bolts intermediary or de- 



finitive, the infective organii^in being de- 

 pendent upon the insect, and undergoing 

 an extra-corporeal phase of development 

 in its tissues. The first group was of .-.s- 

 tinct importance from the sanitarian's 

 point of view, as it taught ns to guarc! 

 against a real danger in times of preva- 

 lence of certain infectious diseases, uat 

 the second one far outweighed it. In 

 the second group fell some of the chief 

 scourges of raankind, in tropical regions 

 at any rate, and of these the greate-t was 

 malaria. Next to tuberculosis, malaria 

 Avas probably the grea.test cause of de^atii, 

 and of ill-health, Avith which mankind 

 had to contend. The proof of the con- 

 veyance of malaria by the agency of cer- 

 tain specieis of mosquitoes Avas to those 

 who knew what the disease really meant, 

 a fact of startling importance, presaging 

 the approach of effective means of check- 

 ing an enemy which, in the year 1897 

 alone, laid 7o,82il British soldiers by the 

 heels in hospital, out of a total strength 

 of 178,000 odd in all India. He need 

 hardly remind them how nobly the pro- 

 mise of that great discovery had been 

 fulfilled, how "the AA'hite man's grs^ve" 

 of former years had become the wnice 

 man's sanitorium, and hoAV it was now 

 possible for the march of Anglo-Saxon 

 civilisation to progress in places where, 

 even six years back, a newcomer could 

 count his reasonable expectation of life 

 on the fingers of one hand. Tropical 

 medicine had assumed such great propor- 

 tions that it practically formed the 

 pivot upon which turned the AA-hole ques- 

 tion of Europea.n colonisation in lue 

 tropics, and, practically 'speaking, tropi- 

 cal medicine was very largely based up- 

 on the spread of disease by insects. T^ere 

 freedom from malaria practically meant 

 freedom from ill-health. Havana had 

 been cleared of that fell disease in 90 

 days, after it had had an uninterrupted 

 reign of 140 years. The discoveries that 

 had been made were, he trusited, but a 

 foretaste of those which were to come. 

 The work of Manson, Ross, McCalium, 

 5eid, and others had revolutionised the 

 methods of research into human disease, 

 and there was little doubt that we were 

 on the verge of further great discoveries, 

 in v\"hich the lower form of life vrould be 

 found to play an essential part in 

 diseases affecting mankind. Dr. Elking- 

 ton, Avith the aid of lantern slides, 

 thrown on the screen by Mr. Xat Old- 

 ham, indicated the manner in which the 

 discoveries Avere made, and showed how it 

 A\-as ascertained that the dappled-winged 

 mosquitoes, Avhich laid boat-shaped eggs, 

 and had the oval cells in the stomach. 

 Avails, Avere the developing parasites of 

 remittent malarial fever. That mos- 

 quito belonged to the genus anopheles, be- 



