NA TURE 



[May 20, 1922 



prevention, it is not surprising to find that certain 

 lay journals, in their biographical notes of Sir Patrick 

 Manson, have given erroneous views of his connection 

 with malaria prevention. Although, obviously, the 

 well-informed writer of the obituary notice in your 

 columns has no such intention, it seems to me that 

 his quotation from Nature (Vol. 61, 1900, p. 523) of 

 matter by Sir Ronald Ross, unless considered side by 

 side with other historical facts, is liable to accentuate 

 the popular assumption that Ross, having been in- 

 structed by Manson as to what he would find in the 

 mosquito, forthwith ^ performed the necessary hara- 

 kiri — and the key to the etiology of malaria was 

 found ; and, therefore, to Manson and not to Ross is 

 due the credit of the epoch-making discovery of 

 malaria transmission. Yet Manson, with no less 

 _^- courtesy and frankness than displayed by Ross in 

 elevating (in the matter quoted by your writer) what 

 Manson himself termed a hypothesis to the rank 

 of an induction, expressly disavowed any such 

 claim. 



In thus acting, Manson was fully aware of the great 

 value to the British Empire and the world generally 

 of the solution of the malaria problem which had been 

 secured by Ross. In his paper read before the Royal 

 Institute of Public Health Congress at Aberdeen, in 

 1900, he said : " I feel safe in asserting that malaria 

 is far and away the most important of the many 

 problems of tropical empire — that empire on which 

 so much of our present and of our prospective national 

 prosperity depends. The politician and the soldier 

 may not think so. They are wrong. Such people 

 habitually magnify their offices. . . . Our little wars 

 and rebellions in their effects and importance are in- 

 significant in comparison to the great natural pheno- 

 mena, disease — to malaria for example." " My 

 purpose ... is to state . . . the . . . leading facts 

 of the new knowledge which dawned only some twenty 

 years ago with the discovery by Laveran of the cause 

 and nature of malaria, and which culminated only 

 two years ago when our countryman Ross showed I 

 how the infection is acquired, and in doing so clearly 

 indicated in what way it is to be prevented." 



To understand Manson's position it is necessary 

 to indicate what was the actual " induction " he 

 placed at the disposal of Ross. The following is 

 found at ^p. 16 and 17 of the first edition of " Tropical 

 Diseases," by Manson : "I consider that the 

 flagella — which as already stated are to be regarded 

 as flagellated spores (sic)^are endowed . . . with 

 locomotive powers, in order that they may be able to 

 pass from the blood in the mosquito's stomach to the 

 tissues of the insect. . . . The plasmodium, I hold, 

 is an intracellular parasite both outside as well as 

 inside the human body, and that when outside the 

 human body it is parasitic in the mosquito. . . . 

 The mosquito generally dies in the water beside the 

 eggs she has deposited. When the eggs are hatched 

 the young larvae commonly devour the body of the 

 parent and consequently her parasites. On the 

 infected larvae becoming mature insects the plasmodia 

 they have swallowed continue, I conjecture, to develop. 

 These insects, in their turn, infect their larvae and so 

 on. . . . Man, I conjecture, may become infected by 

 drinking water contaminated by the mosquito ; or, and 

 much more frequently, by inhaling the dust of the mud 

 of dried-up mosquito pools ; or in some similar way." 

 (Italics not in original.) 



Whilst, then, it is true Manson's induction of 1894 

 strengthened the hypotheses of Dr. A. F. A. King and 

 Laveran as to mosquito agency, and this resulted in 

 an inquiry by Ross as to possible extra-corporeal 

 existence of the plasmodium, it is equally true that 



' Unaided by public funds, Ross devoted years of Jaborious experiments 

 to the solution of the problem. 



the work of Ross proved Manson's theories in essential 

 details incorrect and misleading. 



Holding in mind the Manson hypothesis, as stated 

 by himself, if the quotation used by your writer be 

 placed side by side with Manson's disavowal, it is not 

 apparent there was anj^ intention of Ross to say more 

 than that the Manson hypothesis proved an incentive 

 to action, and that in its absence it is probable 

 research on the subject would have lapsed : 

 Ross. Manson. 



(Vol. 61, 1900, p. 523.) (" Tropical Diseases," ed. 



" I have no hesitation in 1900. P- 21.) 



saying it was Manson's " Thus by direct observa- 



theory, and no other, which tion and analogy Ross dis- 

 actually solved the pro- tinctly, and first, proved 

 blem ; and, to be frank, I that the extra - corporeal 

 am equally certain that but phase of the malaria para- 

 for Manson's theory the site is passed in particular 

 problem would have re- species of mosquitoes, and, 

 mained unsolved at the by analogy, that the para- 

 present day." site is transferred from man 

 to man by the mosquito." 

 (Italics not in the original.) 



It need not be said that sanitary efforts based upon 

 the mosquito contamination water theory of Manson 

 could have secured no conquest of malaria. 



W. G. King. 



Transcription of Russian Names. 



The system for transcribing Russian names 

 advocated by Dr. Bohuslav Brauner in the issue of 

 Nature for April 29, namely, by the adoption of a 

 few letters from the Bohemian alphabet, is open to 

 serious objection. 



In the first place, Bohemian is not the only Slavonic 

 " State-tongue of an independent State." If Russian 

 is to be transcribed into Latin characters as used by 

 Slavs, the obvious model is Serbo-Croatian, which 

 employs both Cyrillic and Latin characters, with 

 regular rules for transcription. The Bohemian and 

 Croatian alphabets are by no means identical ; for 

 instance, ch, which has in Bohemian the same sound 

 as in German and Gaelic, would convey to a Croat 

 some such sound as tskh ; and he would not recognise 

 some of the Bohemian letters bearing diacritical 

 marks. 



But if we are trying to abolish the Germanised and 

 Gallicised forms of Russian names, why substitute 

 another foreign form ? These Slavonic letters with 

 the diacritical marks are as unfamiliar to the ordinary 

 Briton as the Cyrillic letters themselves, — vide Dr. 

 Brauner's examples ; and from this follows a practical 

 difficulty in adopting his system in this country, 

 namely, that very few printing presses and certainly 

 no linotype machines have the necessary type, and 

 the cost of introducing it would be prohibitive. Thus 

 Dr. Brauner's " advantage of a great economy in 

 printing " is outweighed by the disadvantage of 

 impracticability in printing. 



'There is no reason why Russian personal names 

 should not fall into line with Russian place-names, 

 many of both being identical. And for Russian place- 

 names the Permanent Committee on Geographical 

 Names for British Official Use has adopted the system 

 that has been in use for many years at the War Office, 

 and also, except in one or two particulars, at the 

 Admiralty. This is a system of transcription without 

 the use of diacritical marks, which are undesirable in 

 maps ; the vowels have Italian values (e.g. e, i, u), 

 and the consonants English values (e.g. ch, sh, y), the 

 only exception being y which has the French value and 

 is preferable to the un-English zh for this sound. If 



NO. 2742, VOL. 109] 



