The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Ross was stationed in Secunderabad, in the south of India, where there
was abundant opportunity for experimental work--plenty of patients and
plenty of mosquitoes. He got patients with crescent parasites in their
blood and he got mosquitoes to bite them. He found that in the course
of a few minutes after the blood had entered the insects’ stomachs the
crescent parasites proceeded to the formation of sphere and flagellated
body. But he got no further. This experiment was repeated hundreds of
times. Many of his preparations were sent to me, and I could confirm
from them the accuracy of his statements on the subject. Ross was
encouraged, for obviously we were on the right track. One day Ross,
whose station had in the meantime been changed, caught some mosquitoes
which had been feeding on a patient the subject of tertian malaria.
He kept the mosquitoes and after a few days dissected them. He took
the stomach out and placed it on a slip with a little salt solution,
covered it with a cover-glass and examined it with a microscope. He
was gratified to find lying amongst the transverse and longitudinal
muscular fibres a number of spherical bodies, very sharply defined,
and including a great many grains of intensely black pigment exactly
like those of the malaria parasite. Ross was at once struck with the
similarity. After years of labor he believed he had at last seen the
malaria parasite in the tissues of the mosquito, where we reasoned
it ought to be; and he was right. At a subsequent experiment on the
malarial patient he found exactly the same bodies, and on dissecting
several mosquitoes at different intervals of time he found that the
parasite, which originally was six micro-millimetres in diameter
only, grew to sixty or eighty micro-millimetres, each parasite,
notwithstanding its growth and the lapse of time, still containing the
peculiar and most characteristic black pigment. Ross was now quite sure
that he had found the extra-corporeal phase of the malarial parasite.
Some of these preparations he sent home. I examined them and showed
them to a number of friends in London familiar with the malarial
parasite; they agreed with me, as Laveran also did, in believing that
probably this indeed was the long-sought-for extra-corporeal phase
of the malarial parasite. Ross at that time had great difficulty in
getting opportunities for experiment on the human subject and in
procuring proper mosquitoes. He found that the mosquitoes in which
he had discovered these pigmented bodies were of a different species
to those on which he had formerly experimented, and that in this
circumstance lay the explanation of his lack of success earlier as
well as the secret of his ultimate success. Failing to get sufficient
opportunity for experimenting on human malaria he turned to bird
malaria. He found that the sparrow of Calcutta, in a large proportion
of instances, contained in its blood a malaria-like parasite. Ross
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