Tribute to Ronald Ross, India-born Nobel Prize winner who unveiled the mystery of malaria
While the first Indian struggle for freedom was warming up at Meerut in May 1857, a great benefactor of mankind was born in the opposite camp. His father, Major General Campbell Ross, was an infantry officer in British Army services in India.
Ronald Ross was born at Almora in Uttarakhand on May 13, 1857. He went on to become a highly disciplined soldier and skilled professional and a writer, novelist, dramatist, poet, painter, musician, sportsman and above all an inquisitive scientist.
Forty years later, in August 1897, at Secunderabad, the world witnessed a landmark in malaria transmission that changed the course of malaria control and the fruits of its outcome. Ronald Ross became the first epidemiologist to develop a mathematical model on communicable diseases.
The discovery of malaria transmission bestowed on him the honour of being the first India-born Nobel Prize winner and the first ever Army officer in the world to have been awarded this distinguished honour.
This most thrilling episode of research in tropical medicine has been fully explained in his memoirs. His studies on malaria commenced at Bangalore in 1891. His romance and dedication for this scientific adventure could not be stopped by numerous technical and administrative bottlenecks.
The research ultimately culminated on August 20, 1897, at the Army Hospital for Indian troops in Begumpet, Secunderbad, by observing an oocyst in an Anopheline mosquito which had been fed previously on a malaria patient, Hussain Khan. Overwhelmed by the observation and achievement, Ross immediately expressed himself through this poem:
This day designing god
Hath put into my hand
A wonderous thing
And god be praised
At his command
I have found the secret-deeds
Oh! Million-murdering death
I know that this little thing
A million men will save
Oh! Death where is thy sting?
Thy victory oh grave?
Interruptions would not spare him even at this stage, yet with a dedicated mind he completed the work on malaria transmission in bird malaria a year later (1898) in Calcutta.
This finding of the secret of nature changed the outcome of wars and history. Had Alexander the Great conquered Bharat and not succumbed to malaria, the history of the world, including India, would have been different. Similarly, the conquest of Greece by the Romans is attributed to the great tyrant malaria.
On the other hand, the application of the knowledge of transmission was an important strategy to win World War II on the eastern front where valleys of death existed. Guidelines on “Malaria Discipline of Indian Army' are valid even today.
After spending eight years of his childhood in India, Ross was sent to England at a boarding school. In 1874, he became a medical student at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, where he earned an MRCS degree. Ross entered the Indian Medical Service in 1881, which he joined in Madras.
Young Ross used to be greatly distressed on seeing the poor and sick population of India. He controlled cholera and plague epidemics very effectively. Moved by the sufferings of the sick population, he earned a diploma in tropical diseases to serve the people more efficiently.
Ross's journey to success on transmission of malaria commenced in 1895, the year after his meeting with Sir Patrick Manson, the originator of the hypothesis that the malaria parasite is carried by mosquitoes.
Unfortunately, he was not given an assignment or funding to conduct research by the Indian Army authorities. During spare time, he conducted experiments. After disproving the theory of oral and respiratory transmission of malaria, he hypothesised that the clue lies in understanding the course the ' parasites take after they enter the stomach cavity of the mosquito.
Initiation to prove this hypothesis was taken up on August 15, 1897, while he worked as a regimental medical officer in the 19th Madras infantry stationed at Secunderabad Cantonment. On August 16, Ross fed mosquitoes on a malaria patient and kept these mosquitoes in improvised glass containers.
He used to dissect two mosquitoes daily in the afternoon, after hospital work. When no clue was found, frustration was overtaking him. To add to the misery, in this unfriendly and hot climate, he had to stop the use of “punkha” (fan), because of disturbance in dissection.
He used to sweat profusely. On the fourth day of his ordeal, August 20, in the afternoon he dissected the 19th mosquito, but failed to see parasites anywhere. Exhausted, he ordered a cup of tea and waited for it to be brought.
He had decided to discard the dissected mosquito, after scanning it, once again. But during the second scan he noticed round elevations on the outer wall of the stomach. He split it open. There were dark pigment-granules. They were not inert-bodies, because these were oscillating.
While sipping the cup of tea, an idea dawned on him - could they be altered from those parasites in the stomach which have pierced the muscular coat and be lodging under the serous layer? He made drawings and wrote notes in his diary (the facsimile of his handwritings can be seen in his autobiography The Memoirs and the slide).
The next day, he dissected the last mosquito and noticed at the same spot pigmented living parasites, which had grown into spindle form. As the angle of fate placed her hand over his head, he had a clue about the course of malaria parasites in the mosquito.
This work was carried out at the Hospital for Indian Troops, located at Begumpet. The Cantonment Authority in Secunderabad installed a marble plaque in 1935 at this place which reads as follows:
In this building on
20th August, 1897, The late
Sir Ronald Ross
a benefactor of mankind
made the greatest discovery of
the parasites of malaria
in a dissected mosquito
In the following year, Ross’ studies of similar pigmented cysts in the blood of birds and mosquitoes established the mosquito carrier theory of malaria beyond doubt.
He resigned from the post of Surgeon Major in IMS in 1899. After leaving India the same year, Ross headed an expedition in search of malaria-bearing mosquitoes. He became a lecturer and then professor (1902) at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
Ross wrote several papers on malaria and mathematical models. He defined the basic approach to the “theory of happenings” relevant to the transmission on malaria. His interest in mathematics laid the foundation of mathematical and epidemiological models on communicable diseases.
George MacDonald took a lot of inspiration from Ross’ opinion, which reads as: “To say that a disease depends upon certain factors is not to say much, until we can also form an estimate as to how large each factor influences the whole result and the mathematic method is really nothing, but the application of careful reasoning to the problem at issue.”
The Imperial Anti-Malaria Conference was held in Simla in October 1909. As a follow-up of this, a second conference was again organised at Simla to discuss the memorandum submitted by Ronald Ross regarding control of malaria in India.
In 1912, he moved to London, where he served as a physician for tropical diseases at King's College Hospital. For his achievements in malaria research, he received the Nobel Prize in 1902. Ross was also honoured by King Edwards VII and was made Commander of Bath and was subsequently knighted and became Sir Ronald Ross.
He was honoured in 1926 by the founding of the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases at Putney, which he directed until his death (September 16, 1932) and which in 1933 was shifted to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
He also edited the periodical Science Progress (1913-1932), and his writings include the Prevention of Malaria (1910), and Psychologies (1919), A Romance Reveals of Osera (1920), and his Memoirs.
In honour of Sir Ronald Ross, the Assam branch of India Tea Association opened the Ross Institute at Jorhat in the 1930s.
Being born and having grown up in India, Ross spoke good Hindi. In fact, he could pass the Hindi examination required for the services with ease. In the later years of his life, he met the French scientist Laveran, the discoverer of the malaria parasite.
Ross could not fully understand the fluent French of Laveran and indulged in replying to the French scientist in Hindi.