From an Easy ChairLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
From an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history; Science
At Ismailia, on the Suez Canal, malaria was almost universal; in 1866
there were in a population of eight thousand, 2,300 cases. In 1897
there were over 2,000, and in 1902, when Ross was asked by the Prince
d’Arenberg to visit the place and advise as to measures to be taken,
there were 1,551 cases. Ross directed the filling up of the breeding
pools. The marshes were filled up with sand, the irrigation channels
were deepened or treated with kerosene oil (which spreads as a fine
film, and chokes the gnat larvæ), and the cess-pits were rendered
uninhabitable by chemical treatment. In one year the cases of malaria
fell to 214, in 1905 they were only thirty-seven, and now the Suez
Canal Company officially reports, “all trace of malaria has disappeared
from Ismailia.” The same satisfactory results have been obtained in
Port Said, in Khartoum, in Port Swettenham of the Federated Malay
States, in Havannah City, in Panama, and, in fact, wherever intelligent
conviction has led to the active and complete employment of the
methods necessary for the destruction of the gnats. Under the British
Government of India and the African and West India Colonies, little has
been done. Why? Because of the handmaiden theory and the ostrich-like
refusal of our officials to face and accept the master.
An even more wonderful and beneficent result has been obtained in the
case of that terrible disease “Yellow Jack,” or “Black Vomit”--the
yellow fever. Owing to the discoveries and definite proof by Ross as
to the part played by gnats in malaria, the able medical men in the
public service of the United States of America have thoroughly examined
experimentally the mode of infection of human beings with the germ of
yellow fever, and have conclusively proved that infection is solely
and entirely due to the bite of one species of gnat--the Stegomyia
fasciata. They have proved to absolute certainty that yellow fever
is not carried through the air, nor by food or drink, nor by contact
with infected persons or their cloths or emanations, but only by the
fasciate gnat, a house-frequenting species, which sucks the blood of
a yellow fever patient, and after twelve days, and not till then,
becomes capable of imparting the infection to those whom it may stab or
“bite.” The firm demonstration of this fact was not made without great
devotion, courage, and self-sacrifice. In the ardour of their pursuit
not a few of the experimenters risked and lost their lives. Among these
the name of Dr. Lazear, of the United States Army, is prominent. He
deliberately permitted himself to be bitten by a stray mosquito in a
yellow fever hospital, in order to show that the insect could convey
the infection. He was bitten on Sept. 13, 1900, and died on Sept. 25,
having proved his point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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