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
procured a number of infected sparrows and let loose upon them a number
of mosquitoes of a species belonging to the genus _culex_. These
mosquitoes, after from one to ten days, he dissected and examined their
stomachs. He found in the stomach-wall pigmented bodies exactly similar
to those which he found in the stomach-walls of mosquitoes fed on human
malarial blood. He found that they increased in size and in a week or
ten days grew from six to eighty micro-millimetres in diameter. When
they became of considerable size they protruded like warts from the
surface of the insect’s stomach and were included in a very definite
capsule. At this stage the capsule was filled with a vast number of
very minute rod-like bodies. These capsules, which now projected into
the body cavity of the insect, being over-distended, ruptured and
discharged the rod-like bodies into the body cavity of the mosquito.
For a time Ross could get no further than this. He could not find what
became of the rod-like bodies. One day, in dissecting the head of a
mosquito, he encountered two small trilobed glands the ducts from
which united to form a main duct. The glands lay on either side of the
head and the common duct he traced to the base of the proboscis of the
mosquito. This was the salivary gland of the mosquito. He found that
the cells of the gland contained rod-like bodies exactly like those
which he had found inside the parasitic capsules in the stomach-wall.
He concluded that somehow these ‘germinal rods’ (for so he called
them) had managed to find their way into the salivary gland of the
mosquito. It immediately occurred to him that this might be the route
by which the parasite escaped from the mosquito into its vertebrate
host. No sooner had the idea occurred to Ross than he put it to the
test of experiment. He selected a number of sparrows in whose blood
he satisfied himself that there were no parasites and let loose upon
them a number of mosquitoes which he had already infected with malarial
parasites. He found after a week or ten days that the sparrows which
were experimented upon sickened and many of them died; and in their
blood he found the malarial parasite.
We now understand why the flagellated body is developed outside the
human host: because its function lies outside the human host. We now
understand why the flagella break away and enter the granular sphere:
they impregnate it and start it on the road of development. We now
understand why MacCallum’s vermicule is beaked and endowed with powers
of locomotion and penetration: that it may approach and penetrate the
stomach of the mosquito. And we now know why the sporozooites, the
‘germinal rods,’ enter the mosquito’s salivary gland: that they may be
injected into vertebrate issue and so pass the parasite from vertebrate
to vertebrate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account