May 13, 1922] 



NA TURE 



61 



at an early age the highest standard of technical 

 education available in this country, and for other 



reasons, we are of opinion — and our opinion is shared 

 by important bodies representing the engineering 



profession — that the Post Office recruiting scheme 

 outlined by Sir William Noble in his evidence is not 

 of a kind which will best meet the needs of the situa- 

 tion, nor one which most effectively promotes the 

 best interests of the State. Schemes of internal 

 departmental examinations for promotion purposes 

 are unsatisfactory ; there is no guarantee that they 

 will not be at some time reduced to a farce, e.g., such 

 as by allowing candidates to qualify in single subjects 

 at relatively long intervals of time, and there are also 

 other objections to such an arrangement. 



As to Sir William Noble's third contention, we 

 recognise, of course, that in the past the position of 

 engineer-in-chief at the Post Of&ce occasionally has 

 been held by distinguished men, but we hold that 

 cjuite a different stamp of early education and training 

 is now required to produce the leaders who are to be 

 called upon to devote their later years to adminis- 

 trative work in a technical sphere. Conditions 

 have long passed the pioneer stage when knowledge 

 had to be acquired and accumulated little by 

 little, and day by day, in the course of daily 

 work in order to build up materials for the science 

 of one's particular branch of technology for the 

 use of future generations of workers in that field. 

 There are in the ranks of the Post Office engineers 

 men of considerable technical ability, and nothing 

 has been said to the contrary in these columns. 

 ]3ut we are as averse to a government department 

 relying for its reputation mainly on the eminence of 

 one or more of its former chiefs, as we are to a young 

 man claiming distinctions on the mere ground that 

 one or more of his forebears was, or were, undoubtedly 

 a man, or men, of brilliance. Further, one swallow 

 does not make a summer, and, on the same principle, 

 a small percentage only of able men in a large and 

 complex department cannot possibly maintain it at 

 a proper level of efficiency. 



What we desire to see introduced is the method of 

 selecting departmental chiefs indicated in our article, 

 and the adoption of the procedure there recommended. 

 We, therefore, cannot contemplate with the same 



I tisfaction and equanimity, which Sir William Noble 

 • ippears to do, the present situation. The status of 

 the chief technical adviser in a government depart- 

 ment dealing with the highly scientific and compli- 

 cated problems associated with the telegraphs and 

 telephones is at present considered to be equal in the 

 matter of salary — the outward indication of status — 

 to a position the importance of which is estimated 

 to be one-half only of that of the chief administrative 

 officer of the Department, and just about two-thirds 

 of that of the administrative officer in the second 

 position. We are consequently in agreement with 

 the recommendations of the Select Committee which 

 proposes the introduction in this country for the 

 management and control of the technical services of 

 the Post Office of an organisation similar to that of 

 the Administrative Board of the Swedish Telegraph 

 Department, and it is to be hoped that measures will 

 be taken at the earliest possible date to carry out a 

 thorough reform of the Post Office on the lines indi- 

 cated in the Report of the Select Committee of. 1922. 

 The Writer of the Article. 



Discoveries in Tropical Medicine. 



In Nature of April 29 there occurs, beginning at 

 line 30 of page 549, the following statement : " The 

 fact is that Manson's ' suggestion ' that the Filaria of 

 elephantiasis is actually carried by mosquitoes from 



NO. 2741, VOL. 109] 



the blood of one person to that of another remains to 

 this day a ' suggestion.' It has not been established 

 as a fact." 



This statement is so strangely erroneous, both in 

 concept and in fact, that were it not made in a letter 

 professing to rescue truth from misrepresentation, 

 written by one who in his own department of natural 

 science has long enjoyed a commanding position, it 

 would be kinder to all concerned to ignore it. 



From the context it is evident that the term 

 " filaria of elephantiasis " refers to the parasite 

 known in pathology as Filaria bancrofti, this being 

 the species responsible for a variety of pathological 

 conditions in man, among which most pathologists, 

 but not all, include elephantiasis. 



Now in pathology the name Filaria bancrofti belongs 

 to the adult worm, which lives not in the blood but 

 in the lymphatics ; we must assume therefore that by 

 the expression " Filaria of elephantiasis . . . carried 

 from the blood " is intended not the adult but the 

 embryonic form of the worm — known to pathologists 

 as Microfilaria bancrofti — which does occur in the blood. 



Making these necessary assumptions, in the attempt 

 to clarify an ambiguous statement, the interpretation 

 is that a " suggestion " is extant that Microfilaria 

 bancrofti is carried by mosquitoes from the blood of 

 one person to that of another, and that this " sugges- 

 tion " has not been proved. 



Such a suggestion may have been made by 

 some unimaginative individual ; such an accidental 

 mechanical transfer might conceivably occur ; but 

 since the microfilariae cannot develop in the blood, 

 their transfer from the blood of one person to the 

 blood of another would throw no light on the question 

 — how do the microfilariae in the blood of one person 

 become the filariae in the lymphatics of another ? The 

 suggestion would remain — like Touchstone's shep- 

 herd's suggestion as to the cause of night— -an idle 

 and obtuse suggestion, not worth verification. 



Any one acquainted with the facts and their im- 

 plication, desirous of proclaiming the truth to readers 

 of Nature, who are not all parasitologists and 

 pathologists, would not introduce an ambiguous 

 term like "filaria of elephantiasis" into his text; 

 for although Filaria bancrofti — which is the worm 

 often associated with elephantiasis — is without doubt 

 abundantly pathogenic to man in other ways, there 

 are still some pathologists who are not convinced 

 that it is responsible for the particular disease elephan- 

 tiasis. The possibility should have been kept in 

 mind of an inference being drawn that because some 

 doubt still existed as to the full extent of its patho- 

 logical significance the pathogenetic character of the 

 filaria is still a matter of " suggestion " — a lamentably 

 erroneous inference. 



Readers of Nature should have been informed 

 that the whole history of Filaria bancrofti and its 

 relations to man and to mosquitoes is to be found in 

 text-books, some of them written by men who have 

 themselves confirmed the facts and know at first hand 

 what they are describing. To be brief : it has been 

 known for many years that the microfilariae floating 

 in the bloodstream of an infected man are sucked up 

 with his blood by mosquitoes of many kinds that 

 bite him after sundown ; that they get into the 

 stomach of the mosquito, and thence into the insect's 

 muscles, where they grow and develop ; and finally, 

 that as larvae some of them get into the insect's 

 proboscis, whence, when the insect bites other men, 

 they escape on to the victim's skin and bore through 

 into his lymphatics. Every stage has been followed, 

 though naturally for the final stage the evidence is 

 based — quite legitimately — on experiments in the 

 laboratory with an analogous species of filaria. 



The discoveries of those stages in this wonderful 



