On 20 August 1897, in Secunderabad, Ronald Ross made his landmark discovery. While dissecting the stomach tissue of an anopheline mosquito fed four days previously on a malarious patient, he found the malaria parasite and went on to prove the role of Anopheles mosquitoes in the transmission of malaria parasites in humans. For this discovery Sir Ronald Ross won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1902.
On August 20th, a dull, hot day, Ross went to the hospital at 7 a.m., examined his patients, dealt with his correspondence and had a hurried breakfast in the mess. One of his mosquitoes had died and this he dissected without noting anything significant. He had two mosquitoes left of the batch fed on Husein Khan (Husein Khan was paid 1 anna per mosquito he was bitten by; he came away with 10 annas.) on the 16th and at about 1 p.m. he began to sacrifice one. Dissecting it he scrutinized the tissues micron by micron, when suddenly, in the stomach wall he “saw a clear and almost perfectly circular outline.. of about 12 microns in diameter. The outline was much too sharp, the cell too small to be an ordinary stomach-cell of a mosquito..” On looking a little further, there “was another and another exactly similar cell “. He changed the focus of his microscope and there within each of these new cells was a cluster of black pigment. He made rough drawings in his notebook, sealed his specimen, went home to tea and slept for an hour.
August 20th continues to be celebrated as Mosquito Day!
REFERENCES:
- Medicine, L. S. (Ed.). (n.d.). Ross and the Discovery that Mosquitoes Transmit Malaria Parasites. Retrieved August 5, 2016, from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/ross.html
- Bendiner E. Ronald Ross and the mystery of malaria. Hospital Practice. Oct 15, 1994:95-112
- Ross R. Researches on malaria. Nobel Lecture, December, 12, 1902. (From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967) Available athttp://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1902/ross-lecture.html
- Breslow NE. Are Statistical Contributions to Medicine Undervalued? Biometrics, Volume 59, Number 1, March 2003, pp. 1-8(8) Available athttp://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/biom/2003/00000059/00000001/art00001
- Robert E Sinden. Malaria, mosquitoes and the legacy of Ronald Ross. Athttp://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/85/11/04-020735/en/index.html
- Ross R. Researches on malaria. Nobel Lecture, December, 12, 1902. (From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967) Available athttp://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1902/ross-lecture.html