264 



MALARIA 



at a distance of i, 2, and 3 kilometres respectively. 

 The 25 inhabitants of these cottages, although 

 they were put under the tonic and quinine treatment 

 in the non-malarial season, all without exception 

 were taken ill with malarial fevers, in many cases 

 obstinate." 



Experiments of voluntary exposure to bite from 

 an infected mosquito were made at or about this 

 time, in London, New York, Italy, and India. The 

 London " consignment " of mosquitoes had been 

 allowed to bite a malaria-patient in Rome. The 

 experiment had to be very carefully planned : — 



" To have sent mosquitoes infected with malig- 

 nant tertian parasites might have endangered the 

 life of the subject of the experiment ; and quartan- 

 infected insects might have conferred a type of 

 disease which, though not endangering life, is 

 extremely difficult to eradicate. The cases, there- 

 fore, on which the experimental insects were fed 

 had to be examples of pure benign tertian — a type 

 of case not readily met with in Rome during the 

 height of the malarial season ; the absolute purity 

 of the infection could be ascertained only by repeated 

 and careful microscopic examination of the blood 

 of the patient." {British Medical Journal, 29th 

 September 1900.) 



The mosquitoes were forwarded, through the 

 British Embassy in Rome, to the London School 

 of Tropical Medicine. The two brave gentlemen 

 who let themselves be bitten by some thirty of the 

 mosquitoes were in due time attacked by malaria, 

 and the tertian forms of the parasite were found in 



