INSECTS AND DISEASE 5 



not confined to the tropics, our own familiar housefly, 

 flea, bug, etc., being equally dangerous in their 

 spheres. It has also, thanks to our knowledge of 

 the blood in malaria and sleeping sickness, drawn 

 our attention to the striking ftict that not every 

 one harbouring parasites shows obvious symptoms of 

 the disease ; that there are, in fact, quite as many 

 ambulatory reservoirs, or apparently healthy carriers 

 of these diseases, as there are well-recognisable cases. 



I have said that the foundations of tropical medicine 

 were laid upon those upon which Bacteriology itself 

 had been reared, but the commencement of the 

 movement which had for its immediate end the 

 building up of the great subject of Tropical Medicine 

 in our midst, would not perhaps yet have made a 

 start had it not been for the practical and far-seeing 

 Minister who was in 1898 at the head of the Colonial 

 Office, the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, and the 

 then medical advisor to the Colonial Office Dr., now 

 Sir Patrick, JManson. 



The following is proof of this, and the history of 

 the movement recorded here is of great interest, 

 because it shows how the layman sees the practical 

 advantage which can be gained by the study of a 

 subject before even those devoting their lives to it 

 can shake off" tradition and branch out anew. 



Already in October 1897, Sir Patrick Manson in an 

 address to the students assembled in St. George's 

 Hospital, I^ondon, had urged the necessity for special 

 education in tropical medicine in the medical schools of 

 this country. 



