Tonight, 6pm at the University of York - Professor William Bynum lectures on Patrick Manson and Ronald Ross: Malaria and the rise and fall of a scientific friendship. Free and open to all, so do come along! Often described as the ‘father’ of tropical medicine, Sir Patrick Manson’s Tropical Medicine was the first textbook to demonstrate that diseases in tropical climates were not simply caused by unique environmental conditions, but had specific microbiological causes. His research in China had also implicated the mosquito as a necessary agent in the transmission of the parasitic disease filariasis. Working in London in the 1890s, he encountered Ronald Ross, a medical officer in the Indian Medical Service. Manson convinced Ross that the mosquito also transmitted malaria. Their correspondence after Ross returned to India records the blind alleys and final triumph, as Ross discovered and demonstrated experimentally that bird malaria was transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito. However, the two men, both Scottish but radically different in temperament, eventually quarrelled. Ross, who won the Nobel Prize for his work in 1902, came to believe that Manson had not supported him in his disputes with Italian malariologists. This lecture examines the rise and fall of their scientific friendship.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 08:31:25 +0000
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