|
|
|
|
Sir Ronald Ross in 1899
(Courtesy: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) |
|
Sir Ronald Ross was born in Almora, India in 1857 to Sir C.C.G. Ross, a General in the Indian
Army and his wife Matilda. At the age of eight he was sent to England to be educated and spent
much of his childhood with an aunt and uncle on the Isle of Wight. During his early years he
developed interests in poetry, literature, music, and mathematics, all of which he continued to
engage in for the rest of his life.
Although he had no predisposition to medicine, at the age of 17 he submitted to his father's
wish to see him enter the Indian Medical Service. He began his medical studies at St Bartholomew's
Hospital Medical College, London in 1874 and sat the examinations for the Royal College of
Surgeons of England in 1879. He took the post of ship surgeon on a transatlantic steamship while
studying for, and gaining the Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries, which allowed him to
enter the Indian Medical Service in 1881, where he held temporary appointments in Madras, Burma,
and the Andaman Islands. During a year's leave, from June 1888 to May 1889, he developed
his scientific interests and studied for the Diploma in Public Health from the Royal Colleges of
Physicians and Surgeons in England and took a course in bacteriology under Professor E. E. Klein.
He also married Miss Rosa Bloxam who accompanied him to Bangalore when he returned for duty as a
staff surgeon.
In 1892 he became interested in malaria and, having originally doubted the parasites' existence,
became an enthusiastic convert to the belief that malaria parasites were in the blood stream when
this was demonstrated to him by Patrick Manson during a period of home leave in 1894. (Sir Patrick
Manson is considered by many to be the father of tropical medicine. He was the first person to
demonstrate, in 1878, that a parasite that causes human disease could infect a mosquito—in
this case, the filarial worm that causes elephantiasis. He was also physician to the Seamen's
Hospital Society, the Medical Advisor to the Colonial Office and later the founder of the
London School of Tropical Medicine and the
Hong Kong College of Medicine.)
|
|
Page from notebook where Sir Ronald Ross records
his discovery of the mosquito transmission of malaria, 20 August 1897.
(Courtesy: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) |
|
|
On his return to India in 1895, Ross began his quest to prove the hypothesis of
Alphonse Laveran and Manson that
mosquitoes were connected with the propagation of malaria, and regularly corresponded with Manson
on his findings. However his progress was hampered by the Indian Medical Service which ordered
him from Madras to a malaria-free environment in Rajputana. Ross threatened to resign but,
following representations on his behalf by Manson, the Indian Government put him on special duty
for a year to investigate malaria and kala azar (visceral leishmaniasis).
On 20 August 1897, in Secunderabad, Ross made his landmark discovery. While dissecting the
stomach tissue of an anopheline mosquito fed four days previously on a malarious patient, he
found the malaria parasite and went on to prove the role of Anopheles mosquitoes in the
transmission of malaria parasites in humans.
He continued his research into malaria in India, using a more convenient experimental model,
malaria in birds. By July 1898, he had demonstrated that mosquitoes could serve as intermediate
hosts for bird malaria. After feeding mosquitoes on infected birds, he found that the malaria
parasites could develop in the mosquitoes and migrate to the insects' salivary glands,
allowing the mosquitoes to infect other birds during subsequent blood meals.
In 1899 Ross resigned from the Indian Medical Service and returned to England. He worked for
the newly established Liverpool School of Tropical
Medicine, taking a post as lecturer and later becoming Professor of Tropical Medicine, and
accepted a personal chair in Tropical Sanitation at Liverpool University. One of his first roles
at the School was to investigate and devise anti-malaria schemes in West Africa. This was the
first of many expeditions that Ross undertook to investigate and develop malaria control measures
including visits to Ismailia in Egypt at the request of the Suez Canal Company in 1902, Panama
in 1904, Greece in 1906, and Mauritius in 1907-1908.
|
|
|
Sir Ronald Ross, Mrs. Ross, Mahomed Bux and
laboratory assistants at the laboratory in Calcutta where the life history of the malaria
parasite in birds was fully worked out in 1898.
(Courtesy: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) |
|
In 1901 Ross was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and also a
Fellow of the Royal Society, of which he became Vice-President from 1911 to 1913. In 1902 he was
awarded the Nobel Prize for
Medicine "for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and
thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating
it". In 1902 he was appointed a Companion of the Most Honourable Order of Bath by His Majesty
the King of Great Britain, and in 1911 he was elevated to the rank of Knight Commander of the
same Order. He received an honorary M.D. degree in Stockholm at the centenary celebration of
the Karolinska Institute in 1910 and was awarded honorary membership of many learned societies
around the world throughout his career.
During the First World War (1914-1918), Ross was appointed a consultant physician on tropical
diseases to Indian troops and was sent to Alexandria for four months to investigate an outbreak
of dysentery that was hampering troops in the Dardanelles. In 1917 he was appointed a consultant
physician to the War Office and in 1919 he received an honorary post as consultant to the Ministry
of Pensions.
In 1926 the Ross
Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases was opened on Putney Heath, London by the Prince
of Wales as a memorial to and in recognition of Ross' work. The main focus of the Institute was
the study of the nature and treatment, propagation and prevention of tropical diseases. Ross
assumed the post of Director in Chief, which he held until his death in 1932. The Institute was
incorporated into the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 1934.
Ross wrote extensively on malaria including his book The Prevention of Malaria in 1911
and on other topics including mathematics. He also wrote a number of novels including The
Child of the Ocean, Spirit of the Storm, and The Revels of Orsera.
|
|
Oocysts stages of malaria parasites developing in
the walls of a mosquito midgut (stomach). The midgut is in the lower half of the image,
and the oocysts appear as multiple spheres embedded in the midgut's wall. Such oocysts
were seen, for the first time, by Sir Ronald Ross on 20 August 1897. |
|
|
In 1928, Ross advertised his papers for sale in Science Progress, making it known that
he needed the money for the provision of his wife and family. They were bought by Lady Houston
for £2000, who offered them to the British Museum. They refused the collection, partly due
to Ross' stipulation that his arrangement of the papers had to be retained and also due to some
canvassing from members of the Ross Institute who thought that the collection would be better
placed with them. These papers, the majority of which are now held by the London School of
Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, are currently being preserved and catalogued according to
archival standards through funding from the Wellcome
Trust. The Ross collection includes correspondence on the mosquito-malaria theory with
many individuals including Sir Patrick Manson, Charles Alphonse Laveran, William Crawford
Gorgas, and Joseph Lister; notebooks containing details of his scientific research; manuscripts
and published articles on malaria and other diseases; material on Ross' dispute with Italian
scientists over the mosquito-malaria theory and records of Ross' expeditions overseas to develop
and implement mosquito control measures. The catalogue of the collection will be available to
search on the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Web site in 2005.
While Ross is remembered for his malaria work, this remarkable man was also a mathematician,
epidemiologist, sanitarian, editor, novelist, dramatist, poet, amateur musician, composer, and
artist. He died, after a long illness, at the Ross Institute on 16 September 1932.
"..With tears and toiling breath,
I find thy cunning seeds,
O million-murdering Death."
(fragment of poem by Ronald Ross, written in August 1897, following his discovery of malaria
parasites in anopheline mosquitoes fed on malaria-infected patients)
Text contributed by the Archivist, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Images contributed by the Library and Archives, London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine.
Page last modified : December 6, 2004
Content source: Division of Parasitic Diseases
National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases (ZVED)
|
|
|