Ronald Ross Nobel Lecture

    R E S E A R C H E S   O N   M A L A R I A

85

enlarged liver and spleen. And the same theories seemed to me to apply to

kala-dukh.*

This investigation required repeated examination of the blood of all the

cases which I could procure in the town; and, being made at high pressure,

involved another estreme strain on the eyesight. Nevertheless I examined

several batches of dappled-winged mosquitoes fed on cases with parasites, but

the insects selected for the work were like some of those abounding at Calcut-

ta, namely Anopheles rossi. All proved negative. My disappointment was con-

siderable, but I was not satisfied that the feedings, which were left to assistants,

were properly done. Many of the same insects caught in the houses of patients

were also negative. By the aid of my assistants, however, many fresh examples

of the law that the dappled-winged mosquitoes breed in pools of water on the

ground were obtained.

During my stay at Nowgong I wrote a short report, dated the 11th Oc-

tober, on the infection of birds by the bites of mosquitoes

46

. This was not

published until some months later; but of course the principal facts had long

previously been published by Manson

43

.

At the conclusion of my work on kala-azar I returned, now utterly ex-

hausted, to Calcutta.

20. Calcutta (November, 1898-February, 1899). The work confirmed. 

Arriving at

Calcutta on the 19th November I set to work to pick up the threads of my

work on Proteosoma; to obtain cases of human malaria (the plague-scare hav-

ing abated); and to write my report on kala-azar - this being a tedious business

requiring a full discussion of many intricate details. But my health had now

suffered greatly from the continuous exertion made under very trying cir-

cumstances; and I felt scarcely able to complete even my report. The labour,

the disappointments, even the successes, of the long and anxious investigations

of a single subject had been too much for me.

The cold and dry weather had now commenced in Calcutta; and the result

was that the malaria parasites had become much more difficult to find, either

in men or in birds. Added to this, as I had no room in my laboratory which

could be warmed by a wood fire (a gas-stove injured the insects), the mos-

quitoes could scarcely be persuaded to bite. And when they did so, it was ob-

served that the parasites developed in them much more slowly than in hot

weather.

* It has just become highly probable that these diseases are due to a new parasite recently

discovered by Leishman and Donovan.

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Moreover, all this time I had failed to obtain any assistance in India, and saw

no prospect of obtaining any. I had been told indeed by Manson that Dr. Da-

niels was to arrive shortly; but he was being sent, not really to assist me, but to

enquire into the correctness of my statements; and was to remain with me

only for a month or two. The only persons who had hitherto taken sufficient

interest in my proceedings even to look at my preparations (I mean from the

beginning of my work in 1895) had been Drs. Smyth, Maynard, Dyson, and

Cooke; and it was clear that no one really credited my results. Even the Di-

rector General, who was then in Calcutta, would not visit my laboratory. It

was the case of Galileo and the satellites of Jupiter over again!

I was, however, much cheered by the arrival of Dr. Rivenburg of the Amer-

ican Mission, who, hearing of my work, came all the way from a distant part

of Assam with his wife and children at his own expense to assist me. He had

been previously quite unknown to me; and I shall never forget his disinterest-

ed action and the help he gave me.

I had also been delighted to hear from Manson that the work was now being

taken up by Koch and the Italians. My papers had been published as described;

copies of my Proteosoma Report

42 

had been sent to many persons interested in

malaria. On the 8th November Manson wrote again informing me that he

had just despatched some of my preparations to Rome, namely to Bignami

and Charles.

I did not become acquainted with the admirable work of Koch until later

(section 23); but the efforts of Bignami and Grassi were now communicated

to me in a series of interesting and well instructed letters by Dr. Edmonston

Charles - a gentleman then staying in Rome, but whom I had never met, nor

corresponded with before. From these and their own papers it was clear that

the Italian writers had been inspired by my work and had been desperately

endeavouring to follow it; that they had detected the genus (Anopheles) of my

dappled-winged mosquitoes, and, after having seen my preparations, had

succeeded at the end of November in finding my pigmented cells in an Italian

species of this genus caught in infected houses. Bignami also claimed to have

infected healthy persons by mosquitoes obtained in this manner; and, by a

lucky stroke, one of the persons bitten by some A. claviger was found to have

acquired the mild tertian parasite.

I shall return to this subject when describing the confirmations of my work.

The efforts of Bignami and Grassi were, however, obviously hasty and un-

reliable; while their writings were historically most inaccurate. They there-

fore did not impress me, and exercised no influence whatever in the comple-

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