THE PREVENTION OF MALARIA IN TROPICAL 
AFRICA 
By S. R. CHRISTOPHERS, M.B. Vict. 
Since the discovery by Ross that malaria is a disease transmissible by 
the mosquito, many new facts bearing upon the prevention of malaria have 
come to light. Investigations carried on by Grassi, Celli, Bignami, and others 
in Italy, by Koch in New Guinea, by the Malaria Commission of the Royal 
Society and Colonial Office, by the expeditions of the Liverpool School of Tropical 
Medicine in Africa, have furnished us with a considerable amount of information 
concerning the life-history and distribution of mosquitoes, and on the nature of 
human malaria generally. As a result of these investigations many methods of 
combating malaria have suggested themselves, and have even been applied in several 
instances with success. The destruction of the larvae of anopheles, though a very 
obvious method of combating malaria, is by no means the only one. Other methods 
suggested by further researches are now acknowledged by many to be more easy of 
application and more effective. The conditions under which malaria occurs differ 
much, and under these different conditions widely different means of prevention may 
be found to be effective. Certainly many means, which in Europe are to be com- 
mended, must in Africa be very difficult to carry out, if not quite impossible. 
The elucidation of a fact hitherto quite unexpected, namely, that the African 
native is not free from malaria, but is affected to an extraordinary degree, makes the 
prophylaxis of malaria in Africa a problem quite distinct from that of the prevention of 
malaria in Europe. A fundamental difference in the conditions in Africa and Europe 
at once presents itself. In Europe what is desired is to prevent malaria among the 
entire population. In Africa it is an evident impossibility to make any impression 
on malaria among a vast population, whose want of amenity to control can only be 
appreciated by those who have had actual experience of these people. In Africa 
what must be aimed at is the prevention of malaria among Europeans. This in 
itself will be a sufficiently great task to accomplish. The European is but one among 
many thousands of natives ; it is in tiny settlements scattered over an enormous area 
that Europeans are for the most part to be found in Africa. Even in the few large 
towns the Europeans are but a few in comparison with the great bulk of natives^ 
Thus a town of 30,000 or 40,000 inhabitants does not contain more than at most 
1 50 Europeans. 
