MOSQUITO DAY SIR,—Sunday, August 20th, is a date that should
be remem- bered as the British Empire's most important anniversary. It is the date that the late Sir Ronald Ross named " Mosquito Day," because on August loth, 1897, he first recognised the pigmented cells of malaria as a dark stain in the tissues of a dissected mosquito, and so proved that a certain kind of mosquito was the carrier of the world's greatest scourge. This discovery—one of the greatest in the history of medicine— was the fruit of laborious and self-sacrificing researches insti- gated as much by humanitarian zeal as by a purely scientific curidsity, for the discoverer was then an army doctor in India, and a poet and novelist who might have achieved wider fame and bigger fortune in literature.
His discovery made possible the gradual elimination of terrible epidemics and quickly led to the discovery by Ameri- cans in Cuba that yellow fever was carried by another kind of mosquito. Mosquito-control measures have transformed many important and now prosperous areas (like " the white man's grave" of the West African coast), and made possible such achievements as the cutting of the Panama Canal and the making of the great port of Singapore, of which we hear so much nowadays.
We may recall the discovery as a wonderful triumph, but thoughtful people ought to remember that Sir Ronald Ross died a disappointed man in 1932. In one of his many conver- sations with me he declared that not more than one-tenth of the necessary malaria-control work had yet been attempted, and not less than a million people a year were dying of malaria in India alone. The pressure of enlightened public opinion everywhere is still needed to make mankind save itself. In- teresting developments of the measures initiated by Ross have been recorded recently in League of Nations Reports on hygiene, but so far they still sadly lag behind human and economic needs. While the wastage of rich lands continues, some 3,500,000 people die of malaria every year. Perhaps the ideal text for " Mosquito Day " is in one of Ross's early poems, written in India : Cannot the mind that made the engine make
A nobler world than this?
Probably nearly half of the malaria incidence in the world occurs in the British Empire.—Yours faithfully,
r Carlton House Terrace, S.W.i R. L. MEGROZ.
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