Everyone who has read about the building and operation of the Rideau Canal knows malaria was a scourge for the construction workers and for the lock staff. Lt. Col By cut down trees to improve the air flow at the southern construction sites – “mal aria” -(bad air). It didn’t work. In By’s defence, he acted upon the best scientific advice of the time. Browsing medical journals of the period indicates the desperate measures that doctors resorted to and recommended. For example, the Quebec Medical Journal, Tome 2, Janvier 1827, page 77, attributed malaria to “miasmatic exhalations of the earth.”
Twenty years later, medical science was still searching for the cause of “malarious fevers.” Articles describe in gruesome detail the various symptoms exhibited by sufferers, and the use of a wide range of chemicals and surgical procedures to treat the symptoms. An article in the February 1849 edition of the British-American Journal of Medical & Physical Science claimed some success in the use of iron compounds in counteracting “deranged action produced by malaria.” Another article in the same Journal later that year argued strongly that various fungi caused malaria. In the September 1850 issue, Dr. John Jarron stated bluntly that the practitioner had a “duty to treat, and not to cure, fevers.”
Reports are full of the heroic efforts of doctors and nurses to help their patients, especially the Irish emigrants in the late 1840s who were dumped in the quarantine station at Grosse Isle. Many of the doctors and nurses themselves were stricken and died in the course of their work.
One remedy extolled by a British offficer, Sir Richard Bonnycastle, was to wear flannel undergarments in the summer and fall. He claimed that this was a sovereign remedy, although quite uncomfortable in the sweltering summer months. Thinking about it, the thick flannel probably did reduce the ability of a mosquito to bite.
For many years, the best remedy was quinine, difficult to obtain and thus expensive – not available for the likes of the construction gangs and the lock staff. However, we are now somewhat closer to dealing with the mosquitoes themselves.
For those who don’t read the Ottawa Citizen, here is an almost unbelievable finding on the link between mosquitoes and malaria. In one way, it hearkens back to the thought that “miasmatic exhalations” were a cause of malaria.
Smelly-socks trap lures mosquitoes
Canadian funding backs
project in Tanzania
to combat malaria
By Jeff Davis
The odour of stinky socks is repulsive to humans, but an African inventor has discovered it’s as sweet and seductive as roses to mosquitoes.
Canadian tax dollars are helping a young Tanzanian scientist build a sophisticated mosquito trap that is poised to play a major role in the global war on malaria.
Fredros Okumu has received a $775,000 U.S. grant from Grand Challenges Canada and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“This project is a bold idea, one that’s creative, innovative and counterintuitive,” Grand Challenges Canada CEO Dr. Peter Singer said. “Who could have thought a life-saving technology could be lurking in your laundry basket?”
The trap uses chemicals that mimic human foot odour to draw mosquitoes inside a shuttered box, about the size of a garbage can. Once inside, the mosquitoes are poisoned by a powerful insecticide.
“We use a synthetic attractant to mimic a real human being,” Okumu said Tuesday.
“Mosquitoes go in thinking it’s a human being, but they don’t find any blood. Instead they get contaminated and die.”
Okumu’s research found that mosquitoes were drawn to humans by the scent of ammonia, lactic acid, carbon dioxide and other substances released by the skin, sweat and breath.
The synthetic attractant, Okumu’s research has found, attracts four times more mosquitoes than real humans. The trap kills between 74 and 95 per cent of mosquitoes that enter it. Before developing a synthetic compound to lure mosquitoes, Okumu baited his traps with dirty old socks collected from locals in Isakara, in Southeast Tanzania.
Malaria kills some 800,000 people per year, affecting Africans – and African children – in particular.
” This is an outdoor mosquito control strategy,” he said. “The primary focus is to develop something to complement the current primary malaria control tools: the nets and insecticide sprays used inside houses.”
Okumu said the trap – called the odour-baited mosquito landing box – worked best when there were 20 or more per population of 1,000. The traps are built by local carpenters using local materials and can be produced for between $4 and $27.
Singer said the 29-year-old PhD student was exactly the type of innovator they are looking to support.
“Fredros Okumu is a young, innovating, dedicated person who is trying to solve African problems with African innovation,” he said. “We strongly believe that innovators in low- and middle-income countries are best suited to solve their own problems.” (Ottawa Citizen, page A6, Wednesday, July 13, 2011)
The mind boggles ! Does this mean that Lt.-Col. By should have issued soap to the workers and insisted on foot baths every day? The “miasmatic exhalations” were just B.O.?
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