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incarnate. Altogether Dewundara should prove 
a rich field for research. The belief of the people 
throughout the island ia the power of the pre- 
siding deity has lasted for 13 centuries and it 
still lasts. 
Tiiere is an annual Perahera and a fair a 
description of which should form another paper. 
The ' • Koviilsatides'i," an epistle conveyed by 
a cuckoo, invoking; a blessing; on the prince 
Sapunial, son of Prakrama Bahu VII, and pray- 
ing that the war in Jalfna, in which the Prince 
was then interested, might terminate favourably 
was addressed to the god Devundara by Irugal 
Parivenadhapati, incumbent of the Mulirigala 
A.D. 1410. 
" Paravisandesa," a similar message conveyed 
by a pigeout supplicating Vishnu to proteci the 
king Prakrama IBahu and his son, and to grant 
a suitable consort to the king's daughter Chan- 
drovasi was written by Sri Ropula of Totagamuwa 
about the same period. 
There lies at Sinhasanavvella, the anchor of a 
vessel said to have been wrecked off Devundra 
in the year 1812. Is it possible to ascertain to 
whom she belonged, or what was the fate of 
her unfortunate crew? The people were then 
tamine stricken and the wreck of the vessel was 
a god send. They must have looted the vessel 
and it is a well-known tact that relics in the 
shape of plates, &c. are still found in the posses- 
sion of old families. I have myself come across 
a piece of plate which I shall be happy to shew 
any gentleman who would care to see it. The 
finding of it prompted me to write these lines. 
(Signed) Geo, WEERi»KOON, 
Mudaliyar, W.P., Matara. 
.SECTION OF THE TROPICAL DISEASE. 
AT BRITISH ASSOUIATIOM. 
Sir William R. KYNSRy, c.m.g., f.r c.p i., 
President. 
PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
It affords me great pleasure to preside over this 
Section, and the honour conferred upon me by the 
British Medical Association in appointing me your 
President is one I highly appreciate. I accepted 
the position, I may assure you, as a compliment to 
the Coljnial Medical Service, in whicli I spent 
many years of my life. * * 
In the words of Lord Salisbury on a memorable 
occasion, " We live in a small bright oasis of 
knowledge surrounded on all sides by a vast un- 
explored region of impenetrable mystery. From 
age to age the strenuous labour of succes- 
sive generations wins a small strip from the 
desert and pushes forwards the boundaries of 
knowledge "; or, as that great philosopher, Pro- 
fessor Huxley, well puts the same idea, " The 
known is finite, the unknown intinite : intellctu- 
ally we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimit- 
able ocean of inexplicability ; our business in every 
generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add 
something to the extent and solidity of our posses- 
sions." 
Marvellously minute observation is perhaps the 
most notable feature of scientific research in the 
last quarter of the nineteenth and the opening 
years of the twentieth centuries, combined with a 
severe spirit of criticism, and that now, as has 
always been the QsifSe, science, like religion, meets 
out its lewarda only to those who diligently seek 
it. In medicine one of the most surprising dis- 
coveries has been the relationship which has been 
proved to exist between insects and grave disease 
— the direct outcome of the modern spirit of re- 
search. 
I have no intention of occupying your time with 
an account of the successive malarial discoveries 
made by observers of different nations which can 
now be found in the textbooks, and are known 
even to the man in the street, nor wiih the un- 
worthy questions too often raised by discussions 
about priority. But it cannot be too often repeated 
that in the whole story of medical science there has 
been recorded notliing more vvonderful than the 
prophylactic measures which have followed on the 
discovery of the malarial organism by the illus- 
trious Frenchman, Laveran, and by the investiga- 
tions into its life history by Italian, German, 
and American observers, and by our own 
countrymen, Manson and Ro.ss, according 
to the experimental method advocated by 
Bacon and Harvey. If these investigators 
have no other reward they will have the 
highest satisfaction men of science can enjoy — 
that of extending our knowledge of disease and 
of doing good to humanity. I consider the dis- 
covery of the malaria parasite — and that man is 
its temporary and the mosquito its definitive 
host and transmitter, that it completes its asexual 
life and prepares its sexual forms in human blood, 
while it completes the sexual cycle of life, that 
by which the life of the parasite external to man 
is assured in a particular species of mosquito, 
and that man becomes infected only through the 
bite of the Anopheles— of the most epocli- 
uiaking events of the age in wliich we live. It 
may be truly said that scientific research has gone 
hand in hand with practical and preventive medi- 
cine. The physician can give quinine with a full 
knowledge of how his remedy acts; and the sani- 
tarian can try, and in many cases succeed in 
preventing the occurrence of malarial diseases by 
methods devised on scientific principles. The 
treatment and the modern prophy-iaxis of malaria 
exemplifying the idea of Socrates and Plato that 
" right knowledge involves right action," 
Another most gratifying result of the study 
of the causation of malaria, and directly traceable 
to It, is the increased interest taken in the investi- 
gation of all tropical diseases by the establish- 
ment of schools of instruction and the formation 
of scientific expeditiocs and travelling scholarships. 
In the schools of Tropical iMedicine of London and 
Liverpool, and from the lectures on diseases of 
the tropics in many of our colleges, the medical 
man intending to practise abroad can acquire 
an acquaintance with the diseases he will be called 
upon to treat, special advantages long enjoyed 
by the army, Indian, and naval services in the 
great schools of Netley and Haslar. I have the 
mo3t grateful recollection of the instruction I 
received at Netley, where diseases from all parts 
of the world could be seen and studied. No one 
who had the privilege of their acquaintance can 
forget the gifted and amiable Parkes, the father of 
hygiene, that accomplished gentleman, speaker 
aud writer Maclean, whose lectures may still be 
read with piofio, and Aitken, the first pathologist 
of his day, whose work is a store-house of facts re- 
lating to tropical medicine. It is pleasant for an 
old Netley man to feel that the instruction in that 
great school has not deteriorated, and that id 
contiaues to s^ad forth highly trc^ined-otlicers ey^r 
