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Malaria — India’s True Plague

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Infectious Disease in India, 1892–1940

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

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Abstract

So wrote a melancholy Ronald Ross as he toiled in India, hoping to discover the means by which to cure this dreadful scourge. In 1898, his years of research in outposts of the Indian Medical Service would finally be validated when he discovered that the malaria parasite was transmitted through mosquito saliva during the act of biting. Although Ross’ malaria research was indisputably a monumental advance in understanding malaria’s epidemiology, the implications of his research for India were far from clear.

In this, O Nature, yield I pray to me. I pace and pace, and think and think, and take The fever’d hands, and note down all I see, That some dim distant light may haply break.

The painful faces ask, can we not cure? We answer, No, not yet; we seek the laws. O God, reveal thro’ all this thing obscure The unseen, small, but million-murdering cause.1

Ronald Ross

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Notes

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© 2012 Sandhya L. Polu

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Polu, S.L. (2012). Malaria — India’s True Plague. In: Infectious Disease in India, 1892–1940. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137009326_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137009326_4

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34657-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-00932-6

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