The Prevention of Malaria.

£500 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

preventing malaria by understanding its transmission First edition of this comprehensive work on the epidemiology of malaria by the doctor who identified the pathogen's transmission route, with important statistical analysis of mosquito control as a preventive measure. Ronald Ross (1857-1932) was a physician in the Indian Medical Service who became interested in malaria during the 1890s. He was mentored by Patrick Manson, the leading British specialist in tropical diseases, and set out to prove Manson's mosquito hypothesis. Ross's first breakthrough was proving that the parasite could be transmitted to mosquito stomachs from infected humans, and he was then able to track the entire infection cycle in birds using avian malaria. It was the Italian Giovanni Battista Grassi who conclusively demonstrated the cycle in humans shortly thereafter. During the resulting debates on prevention, Ross 'strongly favoured vector control as the most cost-efficient means to prevent the disease, and he developed a sophisticated mathematical model of malaria epidemiology to show that it was not necessary to eradicate all Anophelines in a particular area to effect a significant reduction in malaria incidence. Ross's model was rooted in the mathematics of probability (what he called a theory of happenings), and although it was later recognized as a basis of mathematical epidemiology it was poorly appreciated in Ross's lifetime and made relatively little impact' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biogra

• Binding: Hardcover

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