In 1730 Dr Thomas Fuller wrote: 'Can any man, can all the Men in the World, tho' assisted by Anatomy, Chymistry, and the best Glasses, pretend positively and certainly to tell us, what particles, how sized, figured, situated, mixed, moved, and how many of them, are requisite to produce a quartan ague, and how they specifically differ from those of a tertian … ?'We are now able to tell all these things. They have been written in hundreds of books, and are familiar to thousands of students. Those who belittle the powers of science are not always, perhaps, the wisest of men.The history of malaria contains a great lesson for humanitythat we should all be more scientific in our habits of thought, and more practical in our habits of government.
Sir Ronald Ross, 1910Chapter 2 AnoEST: a genomic database for Anopheles gambiae functional studies