Patrick Manson

MANSON Patrick (1844–1922), a famous English parasitologist, author of the well-known book "Tropical Diseases", founder of the London School of Tropical Medicine, and creator of the theory of malaria transmission by mosquitoes. Born in Scotland. From the age of 14, he worked as a manual laborer in a machine shop, where he developed tuberculosis of the spine and a paretic condition of his right arm, which did not leave him his entire life. In the hospital, under the influence of conversations with medical students, he acquired a love for natural science. Upon recovery, he entered the medical faculty of the University of Aberdeen, but spent the last two semesters at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. He graduated from the medical faculty at 20 years of age. In 1866, he left as a doctor for the island of Formosa; in 1871, to the city of Amoy, where he was engaged in the study of elephantiasis in humans, malaria, and leprosy. In 1877, he linked the microfilariae Filaria sanguinis hominis with the bites of blood-sucking mosquitoes (which were later identified as Culex fatigans). In 1882, Manson found during the autopsy of a Chinese man 11 tapeworms in the perirenal tissue and 1 in the pleural cavity, the so-called Sparganum mansoni, which, as was clarified much later by the Japanese Yoshida and Okumura, represents an underdeveloped stage of the plerocercoid of Dibothriocephalus mansoni, which normally parasitizes dogs and cats. In 1883, Manson returned to England, where he published a book on tropical diseases—"Filaria sanguinis hominis and certain new forms of parasitic disease". In 1884, Manson returned to China, where he conducted research on sprue; from 1885, he moved to Hong Kong, where in 1887 he founded the College of Medicine to teach medicine to Chinese youth. In 1890, he moved permanently to England. In 1894, he published a work in which he proved that 1) malaria parasites must have an intermediate host outside the human body and 2) there must exist a blood-sucking insect in which this parasite resides. Having met Ross, then a young military doctor who had arrived in London from India, Manson suggested that he look for "flagellated spores" of malaria parasites in the stomachs of mosquitoes, which was then carried out by Ross, who received the Nobel Prize for this. In 1898, Manson began the creation of the London School of Tropical Medicine. To finally prove the role of Anopheles in the spread of malaria, Manson conducted an experiment: infected Anopheles were sent to him from Italy, which then bit his son, who subsequently fell ill with malaria. Manson published 156 works in English, German, and French. The course on tropical diseases, which first appeared in 1898, went through 9 editions by 1929; posthumous editions of Manson are under the editorship of Ph. H. Manson-Bahr.