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people without malaria—but the thing that bothers me is: How does it get from one man to another?"
Of course that didn't really bother Patrick Manson at all. Every cell in that man's brain had in it a picture of a mosquito or the memory of a mosquito or a speculation about a mosquito. He was a mild man, not a terrific worker himself, but intensely prejudiced on this subject of mosquitoes. And he appreciated Ronald Ross's energy of a dynamo, he knew Ronald Ross adored him, and he remembered Ross was presently returning to India. So one day, as they walked along Oxford Street, Patrick Manson took his jump: "Do you know, Ross," he said, "I have formed the theory that mosquitoes carry malaria . . . ?" Ronald Ross did not sneer or laugh.
Then the old doctor from Shanghai poured his fantastic theory over this young man whom he wanted to make his hands: "The mosquitoes suck the blood of people sick with malaria . . . the blood has those crescents in it . . . they get into the mosquito's stomach and shoot out those whips . . . the whips shake themselves free and get into the mosquito's carcass. . . . The whips turn into some tough form like the spore of an anthrax bacillus. . . .The mosquitoes die . . . they fall into water . . . people drink a soup of dead mosquitoes. . . ."
This, mind you, was a story, a romance, a purely trumped-up guess on the part of Patrick Manson. But it was a passionate guess, and by this time you have learned, maybe, that one guess, guessed enthusiastically enough—one guess in a billion may lead to something in this strange game of microbe hunting. So this pair walked down Oxford Street. And Ross? Well, he talked about gnats and mosquitoes and did not know that mosquitoes were gnats. But Ross listened to Manson. . . . Mosquitoes carry malaria? That was an ancient superstition—but here was Doctor Manson, thinking about nothing else. Mosquitoes carry malaria? Well, Ross's books had not sold; his mathematics were ignored. . . . But here was a