• 
• 
• 
• 

Introduction

Through the intervention of some other researchers, Ronald Ross became convinced that mosquitoes were the carrier of malaria. Leaving his wife and children in England, he returned to India, where he had previously worked on the problem of malarial transmission. In his spare moments from his regular medical duties, he dissected mosquitoes for the telltale black granule crescents that signified malaria in human victims. His superiors scoffed at him and moved him from place to place, interrupting his research at crucial moments in the mosquito cycle. Still he dissected hundreds of mosquito breeds, searching for the carrier. Finally, after three years of failure, on this day, 20 August, 1897, he found black crescents in an anopheles mosquito. He began a poem that night in elation. Ross, who identified himself as a Christian, quoted some of Paul’s words to the church at Corinth.