In Tuesday's issue of the Pall Mall Gazette the Rome
corre- spondent of that journal records the experiments of the British mission sent out three months ago by the London School of Tropical Medicine to study malaria in the Cam- pagna. Daring all that period the two doctors, resident in the most malarial spot of the district, "have taken neither quinine nor arsenic, nor any other medicine to prevent or cure malaria. They have slept always with the windows open, have had the earth dug up about the premises, have drunk the bad water of the place, have worked during the day like labourers, have got soaked with rain, taking with all this only one precaution, not to be bitten from sunset to sunrise by the anopheles mosquito, the whole house being absolutely mosquito-proof, while in the houses and huts about not one person has escaped the malaria, although fighting it with the best known remedies." The immunity which the doctors have enjoyed goes a long way towards confirming the new theory that the only source of malaria is the bite of the anopheles mosquito, which in turn receives the infection only from biting a human being infected with malaria. Further evi- dence has been furnished by the experiment of sending to London some mosquitoes, inoculated as described above, which were then made to bite the son of Dr. Manson, the medical adviser to the Colonial Office, himself a physician who had never lived in malarial countries, or been afflicted previously with malaria. "In due time be was taken with the exact form of malaria of the original patient." It is to be hoped that Dr. Manson may derive no lasting injury from his self-sacrificing devotion to the interests of science. The further problem, how the original malarial patient caught the malaria, is still to be solved.
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