The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-09-17

the conclusion that since man can be given malarial fever in no other way than by injecting the haematazoa be- meath his skin, some insect which sucks the blood of man and flies about must be the culprit that plays the trick. He clalmed 1t was the ubiquitous mosquito Dr. Manson is of the belief that the haematozoa can live in the blood of the mosquito as we'll as in that of man, so that when mosquito splits up mans skin with her double-edged stiletto pre- paratory to sucking his blood, she leaves a port of entrance wide open for the haematozoa to pass from the mosquito to the man during the act of sucking. The English physicians quar- tered in the tropics have taken up Dr.
 Manson's theory and accumulated a vast amount of evidence that is very damaging testimony against the mos quito.
 Now comes the great German bas- teriologist, Dr. Koch, as a champion of the mosquito theory, so that the chan ces for the mosquito to escape convic- tion are slim. pr. Koch is not only the greatest living bacteriologist but one of the greatest scientists that ever liv- ed, for combined in him is untiring, painstaking industry, with that exqui- sitely close reasoning faculty, coupled with the vivid imagination which en- ables the true scientist to follow his discoveries to the very verge of their consequences. When such man lends the weight of his opinion to a theory, it is well worthy of profound consider ation. Dr. Koch has recently returned to Germany from South Africa, where he was sent to study certain diseases of domestic animals. Upon his return ne was invited by the German Colonial society of Berlin to give an account of his observations before an audience that included some of the best medical minds of Germany. His talk was in formal, and most of it was devoted to malaria. It was appropriate, because the existence of malaria in German East Africa makes the work of coloni- bation there extremely difficult. He distinctly stated that it was his belief that the malarial fever is spread by mosquitoes and not by water or air. He found that mosquito nets afforded effectual protection against the disease when wandering over infected belts of territory. It is well known that Emin Pasha and Stanley, also, believed in the protection by the mosquito net.
 Blood parasites are common in quite a number of the lower animals. Birds, for instance, seem to suffer from ma larial infection very similar to that of man. An analogous case of haematoza being conveyed to animals by an insect is that of Texas cattle fever. Texas fever is caused by haematozoa, that pr. Allen J. Smith, professor of pathology in the University of Texas, has conclu- sively proved are conveyed from animal
 to animal by means of the cattle tick. Dr. Koch, in his work in South Africa,
 met with similar disease in cattle, and confirmed the discovery of Dr. Smith, and in the Berlin talk compliments
 highly the complete and successful work of the American observer
 l If it be true that the mosquito con-
 veys the malarial haematozoon, how does the haematozoon get into the mos quito? As was said before, we know | absolutely nothing of the haematozoon
 outside of the body, but probably in
 some of it's form the haematozoon lives
 and grows in the warm water of marsh es that contain suitable food for it. The l mosquito deposits her eggs in these wa l ters,' they hatch out into the familiar l wiggle-waggle, which probably feed l upon or become inoculated with the | haematozoa, and when the wiggle-wag-
 gle is transformed into mosquito it
 contains the parasite, ripe for introduc- 1 ton into man. But mosquitoes are very 1 numerous and bloodthirsty in northern | attitudes, as the Klondikers can testify l yet malaria is unknown in these re- ! gions. The probable reason for this is
 that the haematozoa must have cer- l tain amount of warmth for their exist
 ence, and they do not find suitable | temperature for their growth in waters | of attitudes north of 45 degrees-St | Louis Globe Democrat