The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-10-06
What Medicine Knows Today


Ten years ago malaria was the
worst pestilence that afflicted the hu-
man race. Saving only tuberculosis
1t had no rival worthy of the name
Beside il. as II was then, such mall
aides as smallpox. yellow fever, can
Ger, and even the buponic plague seem
puny.
1t killed hundreds of thousands of
white. brown. yellow and black men
every year. 1t made millions of square
miles of the richest and most fertile
soil in the world absolutely uninhab-
liable. 1t was the bar that kept white
men out of the tropics. 1t made At
RIGA place accursed, the Isthmus of
Panama a horrible pesthole, and the
vast valley of the Amazon a desc
lation.
From the equator IL stretched forth
its tentacles along sea-coast and wa
terway to the latitude of Chicago. 1t
devastated the Italian campagna and
gave over large areas in the United
States to the negro squatter and
the buzzard. Only the cold winds from
the north stayed It's progress
Today malaria still takes its heavy
toll; but it's day of reckless slaughter
is passing. Within the last decade it
has lost its old mysterious terror and
become a conquerable disease. Ply
IL,
they know, too, how to prevent Ii and
how to cure 1t. According to DIR.
Gorgas, the great American patholo-
gist, il will be stamped out within
hundred years.
When that happens, white men will
be able to settle in the tropics. Great
cities will arise along the Amazon and
the Congo. Great civilizations will
grow up. perhaps. in Central America,
Java and Borneo.
1t would be interesting to tell the
story OF the war upon malaria, but
the telling would require a hundred
pages OF this paper. II would intro
duce the reader to heroes who exposed
themselves to infection and almost GER
tain death that their fellow men might
live. And II would deal with obscure
men who spent years bending over mi
croscopes: Not one man, but a thou
sand men. fought the battle of science
against malaria. 1t began years and
years ago, and the end was not in
sight until 1897, when Ross made his
epoeh-making discovery that the dis
ease was transmitted from man to man
by the anopheles mosquito.
Malaria is caused by a minute organ
ism OF the class of protozoon, called
sporozoa, and of the genus plasmo-
dunn The organisms of most diseases,
despite the fact that many of them
move about, are vegetables-that is the
case, for example, with the bacillus of
typhoid fever-but the malaria proto-
zoon Is a true animal. 1t is, of course.
at the very bottom of the scale and as
far below the common angle worm as
the ang1e-Worm is below the race
horse. but all the same il is an ANIMAL
1t lives by feasting on the blood of
higher things. and besides invading
man, IL and its near relatives also in
habit the blood of birds, reptiles and
insects Crows and pigeons often die
from malaria and a malady differing
from it very little afficts frogs.
In man the protocol take UP their
residence in the red blood corpuscles.
and at their first appearance are pale
and almost transparent bodies-so
small that ii takes five of them to
equal in diameter a healthy corpuscle
They move about and grow rapidly
and by the end of forty-eight hours
they are much larger. Then they be-
gin TO appear knotty and uneven and
suddenly each one of them separates
INTO from fifteen to twenty-five small
er ones.
This is one of their two methods of
reproducing their kind. They just
split up into parts and each part is
as lively and as perfect in form as its
parent Scientists call this the asexual
method of reproduction. 1t is to be
encountered only among the very low
est of living things that are so primi-
tive that they have no sex
But the malaria protocol does not
always beget its kind in this fashion.
Sometimes. indeed. it shows sexual diff
ferentiation. That is to say, it is
sometimes divided into two classes
the male and the female. This happens
about once in every corpuscle family.
The majority of its members are with
out sex, but there do appear certain
number of males and one female
These more advanced members of
the family swim about among the
others and grow TO a comparatively
large size, the females being larger
than the males. One might expect
them to breed in their native corpus
Gle, but for some unknown reason they
never do so. That they may become
the parents of young protozoon it
seems necessary for them to escape
from the human body.
One of their favorite haunts during
their breeding season, is the stomach
OF the female anopheles mosquito This
mosquito inhabits swamps and stag
nant pools in all parts of the world
and its nocturnal buzzing is familiar
10 everyone. The male lives upon
plants and goes about his business
without DOiner1ns human beings, but
the female is a blood-sucker She
roves around at night in search of
blood and when she encounters a man
who is foolish enough to sleep without
a moSquito-bar she drives her sword
like beak into his skin and sucks out a
drop OF his blood
Now. if this man happens to have
malaria, his blood is full of the malaria
protozoon, and some of them get into
the stomach OF the mosquito. There,
if they happen to be of the sort di-
vided into sexes. they begin to breed
Seven days later the females, firmly
imbedded in the walls of the MOSQUITOES
minute stomach, give birth to hundreds
of young ones. which begin at once to
invade the mosquitoes abdominal cav
ity. From the body cavity they get
into the salivary glands OF the insect:
and so the next time she bites a man
some of them are left in the wound
made by her beak. From this wound
they travel into the blood of the man
and make their home in his red cor
puscles- When they are firmly estab-
lished there the man begins to feel
tired and mopey and his temperature
rises. This is followed by sweats and
chilis. In a word, he has malaria.