Malaria and the Six Cinchona Trees
Malaria was one of the scourges of the British Indian Empire. William Gardener writes how a remedy was at last provided by the introduction of a South-American tree.
Most of the readily observable creatures that run, creep, or fly over the earth perform at least one function that is useful to the rest of us. Only mosquitoes seem uniquely to be parasites and pests; and even for them, no doubt, some claim to utility could be advanced. Nor do they lack beauty.
Among other species, the anopheles is recognizable by its parti-coloured wings and its habit of standing on its head while biting. Identification at this stage, however, comes too late for safety; if the anopheles tapping the blood-stream is infected with malaria, it has already transmitted the malady.
The discovery that malaria is transmitted by the agency of the mosquito—and to human beings, so far as we know, by the anopheles alone—is a very recent development in man’s long knowledge of the disease. Analysis was far advanced in the fifth century B.C., when Hippocrates distinguished quotidian, tertian, and quartan agues. Tropical and sub-tropical regions are almost universally afflicted.
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