Abstract
I HAVE chosen the subject of twenty years' research on kala-azar for the main portion of my address to-night, both because of the great importance of this disease in a large area of India, and also of the ignorance of the general public regarding it. Most people have fairly definite ideas about malaria and cholera, but few have any regarding the far more deadly and insidious kala-azar, which, on account of its extremely high mortality and the painfully lingering nature of the disease, is without doubt the most terrible scourge occurring in India. It is now more than twenty years since I was fortunate enough, when with less than three years' service, to be selected. to carry out the second frivestigation of the Assam epidemic of kala-azar, and it has never ceased from that time to occupy my thoughts, although my opportunities for continuing my researches on it have sometimes been more limited than I should have liked. Fortunately, I have been able to discover how to prevent the spread of the disease, and also independently to find a cure for it. The time, therefore, seems to be ripe for giving a brief popular summary of the progress which has been made in our knowledge of kalaazar through the researches of the last twenty years, which has resulted in a very great degree of success as regards both the prevention and the cure of the disease, although some links in the chain of infection still remain to he forged.
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Researches on Kala-Azar 1 . Nature 99, 296–299 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/099296a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/099296a0