PREVENTIVE OF MALARIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 260, 3 November 1931, Page 9

PREVENTIVE OF MALARIA.

BRITISH DISCOVERY.

EFFECT ON" COLONISATION.

A preventive of malaria, which will revolutionise the colonisation of tropical countries; has been discovered in England, according to Dr. Bramwell Cook, who arrived in Auckland this morning by the Maunganui. He has been studying tropical diseases in England, and he intends to go out to India soon as a medical missionary in the Salvation Army. Dr. Cook.is going to Otago •to complete the formalities for receiving his M.D. degree. He' already holds the degrees of 8.A., M.8., Ch.B. (New Zealand), M.R.C.P. (London),.' F.R.C.S. (Edinburgh) and D.T.M. (England).

Up to the present doctors had had to treat the symptoms when they appeared, Dr. Cook said, but the discovery of this drug, called plasmoquin, would enable the fever to be treated specifically as distinct from symptomatically. "That is to say," he explained, "instead of havjng to look out for the symptoms of the disease, and try to treat them, each malaria patient will be given this drug, the action of which will kill the disease."

If the drug proved tlxe success it promised, it would minimise the importance of the malaria mosquito. It would not matter if a person were 'bitten l>v the pest if lie had been treated with the drug, beca-jse the disease would be killed. The discovery had just been made public in the "British Medical Journal," said Dr. Cook, and much Avas hoped of it.