Abstract
IT is a matter for regret that the obituary notice of a well-known medical man should be used to put forward a statement of his share in the progress of knowledge which is misleading. It is necessary to correct such a statement when it is conspicuous and likely to be accepted as truthful. In a brief biography of the late Sir Patrick Manson in the Times of April 10, it is stated that “modern tropical medicine” was born when he suggested that the Filaria sanguinis hominis—discovered some years previously by Dr. Timothy Lewis in persons afflicted with elephantiasis—“is taken from one person to another by mosquitoes”. On the ground that this was the first suggestion as to the carriage of disease-germs by mosquitoes, and was well founded, the chief merit in the later discoveries of the part played by those insects in the transmission of malaria and of yellow fever is attributed by the Times to Sir Patrick Manson.
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LANKESTER, E. Discoveries in Tropical Medicine. Nature 109, 549 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/109549a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/109549a0
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