Who is the killer? Anopheles
- Born December 4, 1899 The team of researchers led by the zoologist Giovanni Battista Grassi (1854-1925) reported that the way to contaminate malaria was the Anopheles mosquito.
Thus, they obtained tests against one of the greatest murderers in history, or rather against the murderer's accomplice, as the disease is caused by parasitic plasmodium.
In ancient times they believed that the cause of the disease was stagnant water, hence the name of malaria (in Italian, “bad air”). By the end of the 19th century it had long been suspected that it was not of real origin, but there was no evidence against the principal suspect. Grassi's team thought about using a healthy volunteer and letting a contaminated mosquito grab him. The result was positive for the researchers, not so much for the volunteer who had been made with malaria.
But it wasn't a definitive test. At that time, Rome was within the risk zone of malaria, and the volunteer might have taken the disease by another route. In a low-risk area, it was necessary to get malaria contaminated. For this reason, Grassi sent several infected mosquitoes to the laboratory of Scottish physician Patrick Manson (1844-1922). Thurburn, Manson's son, volunteered in this case. As he was also a medical student, he learned very carefully what had happened. “The first mosquitoes came on July 5. They were in poor condition (…) The second shipment came on August 29, and the mosquitoes did not stop grabbing me in the hands (…). I was fine until 13 September. That morning I felt weak and at 4:30 I slept with a lot of headache, chills, weakness, back and bone pain and fever.”
Two or three months later, Grassi told him, he had no hesitation in identifying the culprit. But this effort had no reward.
Thurburn Manson captured a mild variant of non-fatal malaria and completed it in five days. Shortly afterwards he passed the latest tests and got the title of doctor. But two years later, he'd die of an accidental shot.
Grassi had a great chance of winning the Nobel. But a few months later, the bacteriologist Ronald Ross (1857-1932) came to the same conclusion and, due to some tensions of the past, he was finally awarded the Scottish award in 1902.
And even though Grassi's work and all those who have come later have managed to reduce malaria, the culprit is still not fully controlled; in 2016, malaria sickened 216 million people and died 445,000.
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