THE FIGHT WITH MALARIA.
Malarial Fever : its Cause, Prevention, and Treatment. By Ronald Ross. (Longmans and Co. 2s. 6d.)—In this excellent little book, which is the first Memoir published by the well-known Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Major Ross refers with a somewhat justifiable asperity to the attempts which have been made to deprive him of the credit which the world owes him in regard to the scientific study of malaria. "It is necessary to add here," he says, after describing the researches which fixed the guilt of spreading fever upon the mosquito," that as soon as the difficult problem regarding the exact mode in which the malarial fever is propagated was solved, a number of foreigners made the usual efforts to pirate the whole discovery. As a matter of fact, the problem was solved solely and simply by my researches of 1895-99, based upon the profound inductions of Manson and Laver-an. Koch and Daniels were the first to confirm my work by really honest and reliable researches." As those who remember the controversies about the priority of Boyle and Marriotte, Adams and Leverrier, are well aware, it is often a difficult matter to know who is really the first to solve a problem at which a number of men are working, and it is well to have Dr. Ross's claim put on record at a time when it is still possible to test it. We believe that he is quite justified in claiming the chief credit for this very important discovery, although it is possible that others were independently on the track. At any rate, there can be no question that the Empire is deeply indebted to him for the work which has now made it possible to look forward to a time when malaria will be as rare among Englishmen whose work lies in the tropics as ague is in our own islands. "It is, in my opinion," writes Major Ross, "possible to rid a whole town of mosquitoes by adopting concerted action against them." He has conclusively proved that where there are no mosquitoes there can be no malaria, because they—and they alone—convey the parasite which causes the disease from the sick to the healthy. It follows that, by the careful following of such measures of precaution as are clearly described in this little book, a white man may go into the most deadly malarial districts with considerable prospects of immunity. There could be few greater boons to an Empire which
owns so many square miles of tropical swamp as our own, and this invaluable little book ought to be in the hands—or the head—of every Englishman whose duty or pleasure calls him to visit a malarial district.
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