Manson & Ross: Death by mosquito

For this installment of our series we travel to the tropics to look at the beginning of our understanding of malaria. In 1900 Patrick Manson wrote a seminal paper in the BMJ Experimental Proof of the Mosquitomalaria Theory he worked closely with Ronald Ross, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for medicine for his work on malaria.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• science
• medicine
• BMJ
• history
• archive
• malaria
• mosquito
• anopheles
• italy
• UK
• britain
• artimesia
• quinnine
• water
• swamp.

[strife01]

@Vanderberg123

Really? Culicine mosquitoes were the only ones that could infect birds?

[Vanderberg123]

The video is extremely well done but a bit too chauvinistic for my taste. The elegant drawings of the malaria parasite by the Italian, Giovanni Grassi are shown early on but there is not a word mentioned about Grassi and his fellow Italian malariologists. Many feel that Grassi should have shared the Nobel prize with Ross but politics prevailed.

[Vanderberg123]

As someone who has spent most of my life in malaria research, I much enjoyed this video. However a comment. The main reason for the long delay in the discovery by Ross was that he began by using the wrong mosquitoes. The video neatly duplicates this error. It shows photos of culicine mosquitoes that do not transmit malaria to humans; transmission is by Anopheles mosquitoes. It was only when Ross used culicine mosquitoes in studies on bird malaria could he get infections within his mosquitoes.

[Singul4r1ty]

(mosquito) bitesized informative, thanks!