TRYING THE "BUGS"

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 129, 3 June 1922, Page 10

TRYING THE "BUGS"

HOW MALAEIA WAS BUN DOWN

Sir- Patrick Manson, for * whom a, memorial aervice was held in St. Paul's Cathedral recently, planned the famous experiment which, in 1900, proved the transmission of malaria by mosquitoes. The experiment consisted of two tests, one positive, the other negative. For the' f"3t test, mosquitoes reared and infected abroad were sent to London and there allowed to bite a man who had never had malaria. For the second, two men who had never had malaria went to the *Roman Campagna and there, in a district notoriously malarious, lived throughout a fever season protected only against mosquito bites. / The story of this second test— carried out by Dr. Lewis Sambon and Dr. Low, who spent,, this dangerous period without harm in a mosquitoproof hut at ..the edge of a vast swamp near the mouth of the Tiber—has often been told. Less generally known is „tho chronicle of the first and no less successful test, in which Patrick Thurburn Manson,, a son of the eminent scientist, volunteered to be bitten by infected insects *'sent home by Dr. Sambon from the Campagna.. According to the account given by Manson the elder in his letters to Sambon, the son was bitten by' the Eomau mosquitoes about the beginning of July, again- at the end of August, and again early in September. Ho kept quite well until 13th September, when he got up "feeling cheap," and with a temperature of 99. The fever continued until the evening of the 15th, when the temperature after chills went up to 104, with delirium, and the fever ended for the time in profuse sweat. On the following,afternoon the fever returned. An examination of his son's blood then showed Manson the parasites he had been expecting, and proved his theory. When the patient's temperature began to fall he began to take quinine, and he was soon-"well and examining his own blood. Confirmation of the result of this test was supplied by an unpremeditated addition to the programme of . the experiment. After young Mansoji fell ill there were some of the consignment of mosquitoes still living. A laboratory assistant at the London • School of Tropical Medicine, where the test was carried out, thought it would be a pity to waste them, so he let them bite his own arm. Shortly after he had a temperature of 104 and showed plenty of parasites-in his blood.