A considerable amount of controversy is still going on regarding the part played by the mosquito in the spread of malaria. What the mere money cost of malaria to India is, may be gathered from the fact that of our soldiers in India three out of seven suffer from an annual attack of malaria sufficiently pronounced to be recorded on the medical books, whilst as regards the general population, cut of 6,980,785 deaths in 1892 no less than 4,921,583 were ascribed to fever; in 1897 over 5 million deaths were due to the same cause, and out of a total strength of 178,197 men in the British army in India 75,821 were treated in the hospitals for malaria. To what is malaria due? The Tropical Schools of Medicine of London and Liverpool insist upon it that the mosquito, and the anopheles species of that insect in particular, is the guilty party. Of these schools Dr. Patrick Manson, so well and honourably Mown in China, was the founder, and Surgeon-Major Ross is the prophet. But conclusive though the evidence may be that the mosquito imbibes with human blood a minute parasite which, after going through a transformation in the mos-quite's or host's body, is again communicated to the next person bitten and so spreads the infection, still this mosquito cannot spread the disease without itself being infected by the parasite—gametocxte is the technical term; the question arises, what is the cause of the parasite? There is scarcely any malarial fever in England, but the anopheles exists in largo numbers and in two distint species—the 'A. bifureatus, and the A. maculpennis (claviger), and having only healthy persons to feed upon, it can bite one man after another without doing any harm. Therefore the anopheles cannot be the only factor in the disease, although it may be a principal factor in the spread of it. A Temilar campaign is about to be undertaken in several parts of India against the malarial mosquito, and it will be inter-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.