1. An investigation is described in which eighty cases of acute malaria treated with prontosil are compared with sixty-eight cases treated with quinine bihydrochloride. 2. It is found that prontosil is not as efficient as quinine in P. falciparum malaria. 3. Prontosil is still less effective in P. vivax and P. malariae malaria. 4. Prontosil is not an efficient gametocide in either P. falciparum or P. vivax malaria. Mosquitoes were fed on “crescent” carriers who had been given prontosil for 7 days and were found to be readily infected. 5. No toxic effects were noted. 6. It is concluded that prontosil, though it has some lethal action on malaria parasites, especially P. falciparum, has no place in the practical treatment of malaria owing to its low efficiency, possible toxicity, and relatively high cost.
Brief clinical and parasitological details of a case which recovered from a malarial infection of unusual severity are described. It is noted that little information seems to be available regarding the highest degree of infestation with the parasites of human malaria which is consistent with life.
BEFORE Sir Ronald Ross's epoch-making discovery, there was no more puzzling problem in medicine than the cause of malaria; no secret in Nature more cunningly hid than the malaria secret. Malaria was known to be connected with swamps, and to be reduced by drainage and cultivation. Yet, as if merely to confuse, men found that to flood some swamps actually improved health; and elsewhere that drainage and the cultivation of the soil produced the most serious and devastating outbursts of the disease. Yet again, malaria was found not only in swamps, but also often on hills and dry sandy deserts. Some jungle-covered land was singularly free from malaria: other jungle land was intensely malarial. In fact, malaria existed on soils of every conceivable variety, of every age in geological time. It was-impossible to point to any mineral, chemical, or vegetable condition essential to its presence. It was, and had been for hundreds of years, a dark, inscrutable mystery.