PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. XC1 



MALARIA OBJECT LESSON. 



As an illustration, let me follow out my example of last year, the 

 history of the cause and prevention of malaria. No single man made 

 this discovery. Laveran in 1880 discovered the minute Haemamoeba 

 in the malarial human blood corpuscles. But five years more of work 

 by others merely proved the truth of Laveran's discovery. Nothing 

 was done for the business men, the soldiers, the missionaries, going 

 into malarial regions of the world, nothing was done for the millions 

 of natives having their life sapped by the mysterious affliction. They 

 were suffocating themselves at night by keeping out the cool healthful 

 night air, while they allowed the sneaking Anopheles to snipe them 

 without serious protest. In the meantime Danelewsky found that the 

 birds had their blood corpuscles affected in many cases by a somewhat 

 similar organism which he called a Proteosoma. The bloods of all 

 animals were now being searched, even the blood of lizards and snakes, 

 but the malaria still went on from 1885 up to 1895. A tremendous 

 amount of truth about a great number of animals was being discov- 

 ered, but nothing productive. Major Ross got at length to work, but 

 still there was nothing productive. Noticing Danelewsky's discovery 

 of the Proteosoma in the blood of birds, he caused mosquitoes hatched 

 safe and sound from eggs to feed upon birds, the Blue Jay bearing his 

 share of it, which had the Proteosoma in its blood. The mosquitoes 

 became infected. These mosquitoes infected sound birds. Now in 

 1898, the mosquito was falling under deeper suspicion. The mos- 

 quitoes would not be affected by sucking the malarial blcod from a 

 sick human patient, however. Nobody ever thought that one species 

 of mosquito was likely to be more dangerous than another. Why 

 should they ? But the experiments went on with all the different 

 species which could be found, for was it not already proven that Culex 

 could infect the Blue Jay with Proteosoma a bird malaria. At last 

 species of the genius Anopheles were found to be capable of being 

 infected by sucking malarial human blood. Next in 1899 it was 

 rapidly proven by Ross and the leading scientists of other countries, 

 that persons might sleep in the most malarial district open to the 

 night air if the mosquito netting guarding the room remained intact ; 

 and if a person were in a mountain sanitarium and be but bitten by 

 an infected Anopheles he would be soon down with the malaria. 



