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had disclosed the life history of the malarial parasite in the mosquito. That the mosquito was in some way connected with malaria was known as early as the fifth century, when Empedocles, a Greek philosopher of that period, delivered the people of Selinus, Sicily, from a pestilence by draining the neighboring marshes. Yet it was not until 1878, when Sir Patrick Manson observed the presence of the little worm, filaria, in a mosquito that there were any experiments to prove that mosquitoes carry disease.

In 1895, Major Boss, inspired by Manson, began to study the fate of the flagellating bodies which were first observed by the French army-surgeon, Laveran, at Constantine, Algeria. A few years later, being so situated as to be unable to continue his work on human malaria, Ross took up the same line of work in the malaria of birds. In July, 1898, he followed the development of the malarial organism