EXPERIMENTS WITH ANOPHELES 151 



the Times* This gentleman allowed himself to be 

 bitten, in this country, by insects previously fed on 

 malarious patients; and in due course the disease — 

 tertian ague — showed itself in him. To prove the 

 other side of the case required even more courage 

 and endurance. During the spring of 1899, Dr. Low 

 and Dr. Sambon, of the London School of Tropical 

 Medicine, with Signor Terzi, an Italian artist, and 

 two servants, have been living in a mosquito-proof 

 hut, near Ostia, in the Roman Campagna, and 

 remained in perfect health. The spot selected for this 

 experiment is so malarious that the Romans regard 

 spending a single night there as equivalent to contract- 

 ing a virulent type of malaria. Yet, when Professor 

 Grassi and several other experts visited the mosquito- 

 proof hut on September 12, 1900, they found the inhabi- 

 tants in perfect health — a fact which they telegraphed, 

 with their salutations, to Sir Patrick Manson, 'who 

 first formulated the mosquito-malarial theory.' The 

 conditions under which Dr. Low and Dr. Sambon 

 and their Italian companions lived were all directed to 

 the avoidance of being bitten by mosquitoes. During 

 the daytime they were allowed out of their hut, because 

 the chance of being bitten in broad daylight is so small 

 that it may be neglected ; but they were ' gated ' an 

 hour before sunset, and were not allowed out until an 

 hour after sunrise. The mosquitoes were kept out of 

 the hut by the use of wire-gauze doors andwindows. By 

 these precautions contact between mosquito and man 

 has been avoided, and man has now lived for months 

 in one of the most malarious spots in Europe without 

 acquiring a trace of malaria. It is most satisfactory to 

 record that a similar success has attended the efforts 

 of the Italian authorities to improve the state of things 

 in the great plain of Salerno. Visitors to Paestum and 

 Battipaglia cannot fail to have noticed how malaria has 

 * The Times, September 21, 1900, and medical papers. 



