MAP-CHANGTNG MEDICINE 



A ROW OF HOOKWORM VICTIMS IN CEYLON 



All of these Tamil babies, some of them less than a year old, have the disease. No Old 

 Man of the Sea ever rode his victim harder than do these intestinal leeches. The children who 

 harbor them never attain a vigorous adulthood. 



If yellow fever can point to pre- 

 Columbian civilizations destroyed by it, 

 and if hookworm disease can lay claim 

 to being a strong factor in making back- 

 ward that half of the world's people who 

 dwell within the frostless latitudes, ma- 

 laria can offer evidence that it has helped 

 to make Africa the Dark Continent, that 

 it was largely responsible for the passing 

 of the "glory that was Greece and the 

 grandeur that was Rome," and that today 

 it lays a heavy hand upon the eight hun- 

 dred millions of people who dwell within 

 areas where it is endemic. 



In India alone 1,300,000 people die 

 annually of malaria and 100,000,000 more 

 suffer from its attacks. 



All over the world, wherever anoph- 

 eline mosquitoes dwell, the "ague" is a 

 menace which slays its thousands, renders 

 the bodies of its tens of thousands happy 

 hunting grounds for other pathogenic in- 

 vaders, and makes its millions less efficient 

 and useful. 



It was Major Ronald Ross, the distin- 

 guished British army surgeon, who was 

 finally able to pin the crime of spreading 

 malaria on the anopheline mosquito. 



Fourteen hundred years before Ross's 

 day those winged villains were under 

 suspicion, and the literature of the dis- 

 ease contains many unsupported charges 

 against them. At length Laveran found 

 the tiny eel-like parasite, which, swim- 

 ming through the blood, attacks and 

 breaks up the red corpuscles and causes 

 malaria. 



Then Ross undertook to find out how 

 it got there. After discussing the sub- 

 ject with Sir Patrick Manson, he set out 

 for his regimental post at Secunderabad, 

 India. 



He began to dissect mosquitoes under 

 the microscope. Week after week he 

 conducted his search for the malarial 

 germ in the insect's tissues without result. 



THE MOSQUITO THAT REVEALED THE 

 SECRET 



Finally, he had two remaining mos- 

 quitoes. Taking one of these, he searched 

 it out part by part, but with intense dis- 

 appointment, until he came to the "wee 

 beastie's" stomach. There, with his high- 

 power microscope, he found some black 

 specks. He recognized them as the pig- 

 ment of the malaria germ. After gaining 

 this clue, exhausted, he slept for an hour. 

 Coming back to his work, he used a 

 stronger salt solution in his dissecting 

 operations, and lo, the contents of the 

 pigmented cells no longer, consisted of 

 clear fluid, but a multitude of thread-like 

 bodies, which, on the rupture of the par- 

 ent cell, were poured into the body-cavity 

 of the insect ! 



From there they entered the salivary 

 glands, and from these reached the blood 

 of the person bitten by the mosquito. In 

 his story of his work Ross exclaims : 

 "Never in our dreams had we imagined 

 so wonderful a tale as this." 



Under his leadership, Ismailia, on the 

 Suez Canal, with 8,000 population, set to 



