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In early 1919, Lady (Dorothy) Stanley (fig 1 ), widow of the high profile African explorer Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), wrote to Ronald Ross (1857-1932), the man who had discovered mosquito transmission of malaria in 1897 (fig 2 ) 1 :
"...My husband, Stanley, of course, had never [he had apparently written to Ross in 1895-6] attributed malaria to the mosquito, though malaria was his deadly enemy all through his life in Africa-and even in [his] early youth, in Arkansas U.S. ... He used to think it was "miasmic"-and in the Great Forest, he told me, he could smell and taste malaria ... he thought malaria was in some cases borne by wind".
She continued:
"... he had a glass screen put up on his boat [a "little steam boat En Avant " which he used on the Congo]-and the fever disappeared ... We all know, now, thanks to you-the real cause of malaria ...".
In a further letter, 2 a week later, again to Ross, she wrote:
"I have read with intense interest, and finished with regret the account of your researches on malaria-The only account comparable to it, is that of Pasteur's Researches, given in his Life ... I think youshould leave this complete record, written by yourself for future ages ...".
Ross was in fact to publish (presumably unbeknown to Dorothy Stanley) his Memoirs in 1923!
The "miasmatic" theory of malaria transmission dates back a long way into history; Hippocrates (460-375 BC) had for example, inAirs, Waters and Places linked the environment with disease. 3 The term malaria was in fact derived from "bad air" which emanated from marshes. Giovanni Maria Lancisi (1654-1720), physician to the pope and professor at the Sapienzia in Rome published De noxiis paludum effluviis, eorumque remediis in 1717 3 4 ; although this title indicates that he, like most of his contemporaries subscribed to the "miasmatic" hypothesis, he suggested the possible role of mosquitoes in transmission of the disease. Lancisi suggested that since malaria disappears after drainage (which he planned for marshy regions) it was caused by some sort of poison emanating from marshes, and was possibly transmitted by mosquitoes. He was not alone in this latter view; Albert Freeman Africanus King (1841-1914) suggested,...