PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 





In the authors' experience many medical men 

 in the tropics are only deterred from undertaking 

 researches in tropical diseases by the impossibility 

 of obtaining the necessary knowledge of methods 

 apart from personal instruction in some laboratory. 

 Numerous works on technique exist, they are, how- 

 ever, more adapted for work in a laboratory than for 

 the conditions under which the average practitioner 

 in the tropics must be prepared to conduct his 

 researches. As a result of an experience of several 

 years, during our work on the Royal Society's Com- 

 mission on Malaria, of the difficulties that Indian and 

 Colonial medical officers experience in making the 

 first start in what must often be work of the greatest 

 interest to themselves and the utmost value to science, 

 we have deemed it wise to give instead of full and 

 elaborate technique, as usually given, only that which 

 we have found the best, the simplest, and the most 

 generally useful. In reality, the necessary methods 

 required to undertake research of the highest value 

 in Malaria are very simple, yet most of these cannot 

 be found in books, and they are with considerable 

 difficulty learnt except by the personal direction of 

 those who are familiar with the small details which 

 go to make success. 



In the present handbook we propose to give the 

 essentially practical methods, by which those not 

 familiar with laboratory methods may, under their 

 own microscopes, follow all the most recent work on 



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