French army surgeon, Laveran by name, working in Algiers, found in the microscopic examination of the blood that there were little bodies in the red blood corpuscles, amoeboid in character, which he believed to be the germs of the disease.  Very little attention at first was paid to his work, and it is not surprising.  It was the old story of “Wolf, wolf”; there had been so many supposed “germs” that the profession had become suspicious.  Several years elapsed before Surgeon-General Sternberg called the attention of the English-speaking world to Laveran’s work:  it was taken up actively in Italy, and in America by Councilman, Abbott and by others among us in Baltimore.  The result of these widespread observations was the confirmation in every respect of Laveran’s discovery of the association with malaria of a protozoan parasite.  This was step number three.  Clinical observation, empirical discovery of the cure, determination of the presence of a parasite.  Two other steps followed rapidly.  Another army surgeon, Ronald Ross, working in India, influenced by the work of Manson, proved that the disease was transmitted by certain varieties of mosquitoes.  Experiments came in to support the studies in etiology; two of those may be quoted.  Mosquitoes which had bitten malarial patients in Italy were sent to London and there allowed to bite Mr. Manson, son of Dr. Manson.  This gentleman had not lived out of England, where there is now no acute malaria.  He had been a perfectly healthy, strong man.  In a few days following the bites of the infected mosquitoes, he had a typical attack of malarial fever.

     (3) Journal Linnaean Society, London, 1879, XIV, 304-311.

     (4) Medical News, Philadelphia, 1889, LV, 689-693, and monograph
     with Kilborne, Washington, 1893.

The other experiment, though of a different character, is quite as convincing.  In certain regions about Rome, in the Campania, malaria is so prevalent that, in the autumn, almost everyone in the district is attacked, particularly if he is a newcomer.  Dr. Sambon and a friend lived in this district from June 1 to September 1, 1900.  The test was whether they could live in this exceedingly dangerous climate for the three months without catching malaria, if they used stringent precautions against the bites of mosquitoes.  For this purpose the hut in which they lived was thoroughly wired, and they slept under netting.  Both of these gentlemen, at the end of the period, had escaped the disease.

Then came the fifth and final triumph—­the prevention of the disease.  The anti-malarial crusade which has been preached by Sir Ronald Ross and has been carried out successfully on a wholesale scale in Italy and in parts of India and Africa, has reduced enormously the incidence of the disease.  Professor Celli of Rome, in his lecture room, has an interesting chart which shows the reduction in the mortality from malaria in Italy since the preventive measures have been adopted—­the deaths have fallen from above 28,000 in 1888 to below 2000 in 1910.  There is needed a stirring campaign against the disease throughout the Southern States of this country.