O' Million Murdering Death!
This film was made on the centenary celebration of the discovery of the malrial parasite plasmodium falciparum, in Secunderabad, when he was the Surgeon Major in the British Indian Army, on August 20, 1897 . It features the history of Ross' discovery and his old lab, now being restored. It also features Ross' lab in Kolkatta where he finished his Nobel Prize winning research in the lifecycles of the malarial parasite. The title is a line from his immortal poem written just as soon as he saw the parasite:
This day relenting God. Hath placed within my and A wondrous thing; and God Be praised. At his command. Seeking his secret deeds, With tears and toiling breath, I find thy cunning seeds, Oh million murdering Death. I know this little thing A myriad men will save. O death where is thy sting? Thy victory O grave? Half-stunned, I look around And see a land of death- - Aug. 20, 1897 , Ronald Ross, Secunderabad.
Sir Ronald Ross
On August 20, 1998 ended the centenary year of the discovery of the malarial parasite, plasmodium falciparum by Ronald Ross in India .
My interest in the man led me to a wonderful voyage of discovery. The more I read about him the more I was fascinated and my Ronald Ross chase began with Amitava Ghosh's novel, The Calcutta Chromosome. Murugan, Ross enthusiast, the main character in The Calcutta Chromosome says: Okay, picture this, here's this guy, a real huntin', shootin' Colonial type, like in the movies; plays tennis, and polo, and goes pig sticking; good looking guy, thick mustache, chubby pink cheeks, likes a night out on the town now and again, drinks whiskey for breakfast some mornings ...the actual research, the hands on stuff took just three years spent entirely in India. he kicked off in the summer of 1895; in a little hole-in-the-wall army camp called Secunderbad and ran the last few yards in Calcutta in the summer of 1898... And for only about half that time was he actually in the lab. The rest went into cleaning up epidemics, playing tennis and polo, going on holidays in the hills, that kind of stuff. The way I figure it, he spent about 500 days altogether working on malaria. And you know what? I've tracked him through every single one of those 500 hundred days: I know where he was, what he did, which slides he looked at, I know what he was hoping to see and what he actually saw; I know who was with him, who wasn't with him. It's like I was looking over his shoulder. If his wife would have asked, “how was your day?” I could have told her. The great thing about a guy like Ronald Ross is, he writes everything down...”
I too, like Ghosh's protagonist, was hooked. Soon I was to realise Ronald Ross has this effect: You read about him and you are drawn into a vortex: who IS this man?
Ross was a self styled “sanitarian”, a rebel, selfish, wonderful, a reluctant doctor, author of bad novels, but immortal memoirs. He was a prisoner of officialdom, was in charge of jails, filed hundreds of reports, fought cholera and other epidemics, and attended ceremonies. He was not expected to do research. Yet he rose to do research on his own and won the Nobel Prize. And raised a large family.
He was blunt & arrogant but he was also a poet. suffering inspired him to write poems! After the Bangalore cholera epidemic he wrote :
Twice have I driven thee hence,
Defeated, dreadful Guest-
O murderous Pestilence,
This time thou conquerest.
What is it that makes Ross so outrageously interesting? It is not only his life & personality that make it so compelling to know more about him BUT the enormity of the “million murdering Death”, the Anopheles mosquito and the “cunning seeds”, the malarial parasite, plasmodium falciparum, that “relenting God” or Fate put into his hands, snatching it away from the other scientists hot on the trail of the malaria mystery.
That elusive parasite he calls “the little thing a million men will save” is the link in the man-mosquito-disease chain. For a long time the swamps and jungle pools were suspect, and malaria etiologically means mal i.e. bad and aria, air. How malaria was transmitted was a mystery.
Ross' discovery of the malarial parasite in the gastrointestinal tract of the Anopheles mosquito led to the realisation that malaria was transmitted by Anopheles, through its saliva, and laid the foundation for combating the disease.
The malaria parasite holds stubbornly to life, & the mosquitoes grow resistant to drugs all over the world, defying combinations of old & new drugs that are being tried to combat them. More than 100,000 possible drugs have been tested in the search for an effective cure. The struggle against malaria continues. Malaria has remained a major killer. Several types of malaria, devouring millions, especially children, are still endemic in Africa & Asia.
Regarded as the quintessential tropical disease, Malaria, has had its reign all over the world and the malarial parasite is a prehistoric creature, thought to have evolved in tropical Africa around 30 million years ago. From ancient Egypt to Italy, the Mediterranean regions, India & Africa, from centuries before the Christian calendar begins, malaria was claiming emperors, artists, poets & the common man alike, described by superstitious & fearful laymen or rational physicians like Hippocrates. Some of the illustrious who have fallen to malaria include Alexander The Great, Humayun, Dante, and Raphael.
Specific treatment for malaria became available in Europe in the 1630s when the bark of the cinchona tree was introduced into Spain from Peru . The alkaloid from this makes quinine, which is still in use and an effective cure for resistant malaria. By the 19th century the link of mosquitoes to malaria had become speculative. yellow fever and filaria were traced to mosquitoes. This ancient curse of malaria still claims over a million lives annually in the tropics, despite an earlier attempt to eradicate it altogether. For countries like us, the malaria problem remains grave.
Ross' discovery made it clear that, to prevent malaria, we have to break contact between human beings and mosquitoes and administer drugs to people exposed to bites to prevent the onset of the disease. He was lampooned in the English Press showing him in comical situations with nets, and screaming at mosquitoes. It is one of the ironies of fate that long after his discovery and publishing of his find, people, even doctors kept thinking of malaria as a disease spread through bad water.
Malaria is the single most important killer of mankind. From Control we went to an Eradication programme but had to go back to Control with the failure to eradicate it. In India we are still in the state where we have to raise the Public Conscience to a level that will make eradication a possibility for India like it was for many countries. Perhaps only AIDS will go down in history as having more awards and research and hype than malaria in its time. In the early 20th century, Malaria gave 2 Nobel Prizes: To Ronald Ross in nineteen hundred and two, & to Laveran of France in 1907. Today, malaria is relegated to the backseat of medical research priority in the countries, which can afford to spend millions on medical research. Dr. John Horton, an expert in tropical diseases, U.K. who came to Hyderabad as a delegate, said malaria was increasingly getting less important because it was not occurring in developed countries and struck the poor more than the urban rich. He said it was difficult to make malaria into a “sexy disease” attracting scientists any more.
Many scientists feel we have not yet completely understood what it does to its victims. In the 18th century it was believed to cure venereal diseases. The complete effects of a malarial attack remain unknown. Dr. Anupam Sachdev, a haematologist in New Delhi told us about how, hundreds of years ago, when malaria was endemic in the Mediterranean regions, a mutation in humans took place to by-pass malaria but it went wrong and the blood disorder, Thallesaemia began appearing in babies born in those countries, like Cyprus where Thallesaemia, often reffered to as the Mediterranean Disease, is a major national problem. The malaria parasite is more brilliant, frustrating scientists with its genetic capability to mutate and change to suit adverse situations. It goes to the credit of Ross who, with wonderful insight, called it the “cunning seed”, whose “secret deeds” he has discovered! It still remains cunning & medical scientists still remain unsure. The use of prophylactics, according to Dr. J.N.Okoyeh, a Nigerian scientist working in the International Centre for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology, in New Delhi , says it is impossible to protect a population with prophylactics, as they will become more vulnerable once they are without the prophylactic drugs and it would only lead to abuse. So at the end of the day, the battle against malaria would be lost. Vaccines are only at best partially effective and the economics of protecting a whole country with vaccines is not viable, especially as children could grow up and die as adults even if covered by the vaccine during childhood, or get another strain of malaria. Genetic engineering is still battling with this problem.
That was the kind of malaria problem Ronald Ross & so many others were up against in the late 19th century without modern medical scientific research facilities, available now.
All Ross had was a visionary's attitude, his observations of misery, a mentor like Manson, & his microscope. He always believed malaria was a public health programme and that is why he is still relevant to the Indian Malaria Problem.
Why did Ross see himself as an exile in India ? He named his book of Poems: In Exile. Perhaps these contrary, enigmatic qualities have brought forward the Ross watchers like Mary E. Gibson, another Ross Enthusiast. She came from London for the centenary to Hyderabad . She has painstakingly researched into his life, & co-authored the book: Ronald Ross: Malarialogist and Polymath. She says she found Ross a fascinatingly accomplished man: novelist, artist, a musician: he composed a piece of music for his daughter's wedding, and he was a surgeon, a scientist, mathematician and an epidemiologist.