Mephistopheles

“ Do not abuse poor Mephistopheles because he has shown the desire to help you to gain your own ends, and has already, by decision and promptitude of action, achieved that which you would never have effected by yourself alone. Tell Mephistopheles to go about his business, and he will go. But he will not stay to be made a—what you call—an animal which is turned out into the wilderness with other people’s sins upon his shoulders?—a scapegoat ”

“ Nature finds in man her highest goal; in his fair figure, in the majesty of his form she ends her striving; and therefore the contradictions of the classic Walpurgisnacht are not so foreign to Mephistopheles, who has to do with Good and Bad, that he does not feel his contact with them, but still they are not native to him. The general contradiction which we meet with, and which also in Mephistopheles expresses itself by the cloven foot at least, is the union of the human and animal frame; the human is at first only half existent, on earth in Sphinxes, Oreads, Sirens, Centaurs ”

“ Mephistopheles himself is scarcely more corrupt, and the representation of these two great poisonous spiders, weaving their meshes round their unfortunate and but too easy prey, can never in any sense impress us as lofty specimens of high art. ”

“ And everything fits,
'Tis thoughts, and we're thinking!
FAUST (as above)
My bosom burns with that sweet vision;
Let us, with speed, away from here!
MEPHISTOPHELES (in the same attitude)
One must, at least, make this admission—
They're poets, genuine and sincere.
(The caldron, which the SHE-APE has up to this time neglected
to watch, begins to boil over: there ensues a great flame,
which blazes out the chimney. The WITCH comes careering
down through the flame, with terrible cries.) ”

“ Meanwhile Mephistopheles, not over scrupulous about means, and not being able to persuade the stiff-necked and timid old snails to creep out of their shell, settles the matter—as has been practised also in the Scottish Highlands—by applying fire to habitation and habitant at once; the pious old pair fall a sacrifice to the greed of the master and the violence of the man ”

“ O I shall lose my wits, I fear, Do I, again, see Squire Satan here!
Mephistopheles. Woman, the name offends my ear!
The witch. Why so? What has it done to you?
Mephistopheles. It has long since to fable-books been banished;
But men are none the better for it; true,
The wicked one, but not the wicked ones, has vanished. ”

“ “I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. ”

“ One recess held a single picture glowing with the warm splendor of the East. A divan, a Persian rug, an amber-mouthed nargileh, and a Turkish coffee service, all gold and scarlet, completed the illusion. In another shadowy nook tinkled a little fountain guarded by one white-limbed nymph, who seemed to watch with placid interest the curious sea-creatures peopling the basin below. The third showed a study-chair, a shaded lamp, and certain favorite books, left open, as if to be taken up again when the mood returned. ”

“ If the body is stuck out nearly at right angles to the surface on which the insect is resting, it is an anopheles. If the body is almost parallel to the surface, it is a culex. There is another test which is easily applied if you have a pocket lens; in culex the two organs known as palpi are rudimentary and very short; whereas in anopheles those organs are almost as long as the proboscis. It should be remembered that the male mosquito is not a blood-sucker and therefore is not dangerous. It is the female anopheles which transmits the disease. ”

“ These spores, or merozoites, enter new blood cells and repeat the process (auto-infection) . When taken into the stomach of the mosquito Anopheles, the parasites become much larger, some develop male gametes (o, p, q) on the Polymitus form {p) ; others, female gametes (r—u) . These conjugate (v) in the stomach of Anopheles, and the copula (w) penetrates the epithelial lining of the stomach and ultimately lies suspended in the body cavity (x—zz) . When mature, the parasite forms spores (A) , which form, in turn, naked sporozoites (B) . ”

“ A sanitary inspector, when malaria is rife, has to be thoroughly familiar with the life history of the mosquito, and particularly with the life history of the anopheles. There are some six or seven hundred species of mosquitoes, and many [Pg 192] of these differ widely in their habits of flight. The stegomyia mosquito is one of the feeblest species in its ability for flight, and it is at once blown away and destroyed when it gets into a breeze. It therefore seldom wanders from the house in which it is bred. ”

“ Knowing the cause, we can now guard against malaria; mosquito-nets and wire-protected windows and doors are a sufficient check on the access of Anopheles to man. If the mosquito and man could only be kept permanently apart, we might hope for the disappearance of the parasite from our fauna. In relieving man from this world-wide pest, all genuine lovers of animals will rejoice that we are also relieving the far more serious lesions of one of the most delicate and beautiful insects that we know. ”

“ The evidence shows that they belong to a family of mosquitoes, known by the infamous name of Anopheles, and they have used malaria, yellow fever and several other diseases with which to slay man; that the female is the entertainer of a very small creature, a kind of Jonah, whom she swallows, and after a time he gets down from her stomach into her proboscis, and when she bites her human victim he leaps into the wound where he remains and eats red-blood corpuscles, and when grown he breaks up into from six to ten pieces, each piece making a new animal life like the original ”

“ Similarly, species of spiders and other forms which are ordinarily perfectly harmless, may accidentally convey and inoculate pyogenic bacteria.
It is as essential hosts of disease germs that arthropods play their most important rôle. In such cases an essential part of the life cycle of the pathogenic organism is undergone in the insect. In other words, without the arthropod host the disease-producing organism cannot complete its development. As illustrations may be cited the relation of the Anopheles mosquito to the malarial parasite, and the relation of the cattle tick to Texas fever. ”

“ The anopheles is especially a northern insect. The ordinary culex mosquito, when it alights upon a wall, stands with its body parallel to the wall, as a house-fly stands; the anopheles mosquito stands with its tail raised from the wall at an angle. A mosquito lays its eggs in any pool of still water, and the "wrigglers" seen in an open rain-barrel are the larvae from these eggs. The larvae come to the surface of the water to get air, and they may be smothered with petroleum; but the only effective way to get rid of malaria and yellow fever is to drain or fill pools of water and marshes. ”

“ So it is ten or twelve days or sometimes as much as eighteen or twenty days from the time an Anopheles bites a malarial patient before it is dangerous or can spread the disease. On the other hand, the sporozoites may lie in the salivary gland alive and virulent for several weeks. It does not give up all the parasites at one time, so that three or four or more people may be affected by a single mosquito. ”

“ The destruction of the mosquito, at any rate in neighbourhoods inhabited by man, is a matter of difficulty, but is worth attempting. To expect to destroy the mature insect seems a vain thing, but the larva can be more easily dealt with. Anopheles—unlike the common gnat, which breeds close to houses, in cisterns, garden fountains, old tubs, drains, etc.—prefers rain-water puddles, natural hollows by the roadside, small ponds, and rice-fields. We have occasionally found the larvæ of Anopheles and Culex in the same water in England, but this is probably{153} exceptional. ”

“ There seems small wonder that the carnivorous feeder and spirituous drinker from a chilly latitude should fall a victim in the East to malarial and other fevers: and this without any assistance from Lady Anopheles or her sister mosquitoes. To her a meed of praise would seem due, for where the mosquito exists there is proof of a need of drainage, clearance, and general sanitary attention. But man, who has stoned the prophets throughout the ages, equally execrates the insects that come as warnings. ”

“ It enters its stomach, where certain differing forms of the parasite, taking the part of male and female individuals, unite and form a new parasite, which, entering the stomach wall of the mosquito, gives birth in the course of a week to innumerable small bodies as their progeny. These find their way into the salivary glands which secrete the poison of the mosquito bite, and escape, when the mosquito bites a human being, into the blood of the latter and give him malaria. ”

“ In the same proportion as the population becomes less malarious, so the mosquitoes become less dangerous, and theoretically a millennium is possible in which man and anopheles, mutually purged of the malarial organism, may live happily together. Unfortunately, a malarious man it is believed remains infectious to anopheles for no less than three years, instead of the three days' limit of yellow fever, and this greatly increases the difficulty of exterminating malaria. ”

“ Some observers maintain that Anopheles does not “sing,” like the common mosquito, and its bite is much less irritating. Only the females suck blood; the act is believed to be necessary for fertilization and reproduction. Anopheles rarely bites by day, and then only in dark places. ”

“ It is of the utmost importance that attention be given to the treatment, as, so long as the patient remains with the parasites in his blood, so long is he a menace to his friends and neighbors.
Mode of Infection Through Mosquitoes.—The most brilliant triumph in modern medicine, and one of the most creditable achievements of human ingenuity, has been the absolute demonstration that malaria is carried [Pg 174] from man to man by means of the Anopheles mosquito, and that the disease can, in nature, be produced in absolutely no other way. ”

“ During a warm spell in the winter or if the room is kept warm they may come out for a meal almost any time.
THE YELLOW FEVER MOSQUITO
Ranking next in importance to Anopheles as a disseminator of disease and in fact solely responsible for a more dreaded scourge, is the species of mosquito now known as Stegomyia calopus. While this species is usually restricted to tropical or semi-tropical regions it sometimes makes its appearance [Pg 95] in places farther north, especially in summer time, where it may thrive for a time. The adult mosquito (Fig. 104) is black, conspicuously marked with white. ”

“ The existence of the parasite is maintained by a vicious interchange between its alternate hosts, mosquitoes and man, each infecting the other. If the cycle be broken at any point the parasite must die out, assuming that it has no other origin or mode of existence. The most effective step would obviously be the extermination of the Anopheles mosquito. A great deal may be done towards this end by suppressing their breeding-places, which means the drying of the ground. ”

“ If a mosquito of the species anopheles bites the affected person, it obtains a large amount of blood which contains many parasites. Within the mosquito the parasite undergoes a further development into male and female sexual forms, which may also form in the blood, termed respectively microgametocyte and macrogamete. ”

“ To mosquitoes as disease carriers only a few pages are devoted; the author referring to such writings as Ross's, Grassi's, Nuttall's and others. He specifically discusses 'Malaria,' filariasis and yellow fever, though adding nothing from personal observation. Birds and probably some animals suffer from diseases carried by these insects and usually only one, or a small group of species, acts in the transmission. Thus the species of Anopheles, in America at least, is responsible for the distribution of malarial troubles, while Stegomyia appears to do as much for yellow fever. ”

“ As far as we know, the parasite of malaria exists only in infected man and in infected mosquito. Perpetuation of the disease is due to the perpetuation of the cycle, man to mosquito, mosquito to man. If the parasite is destroyed in man or the Anopheles is not allowed to breed, the disease disappears. ”

“ The scows have their noses poked into the bank, the men have built smudge fires in front, but we decide that the best way to escape the mosquito is to go to bed. We lie down in the stern-sheets with our clothes on, make night-caps of our Stetson hats, pull the veils down over our necks, and try to sleep, but it is no avail. Each one of these mosquitoes is a Presbyterian mosquito and it has been ordained that this night he is to taste of white blood. It rains incessantly, and that hot hole in which we lie is one brown cloud of mosquitoes. ”

“ Any one who is ill with malaria or yellow fever should be carefully protected from mosquitoes, for, should a person be bitten by an Anopheles, the malarial mosquito or Stegomyia fasciata, the yellow fever mosquito, at this time, there would be great danger that the insects might fly away and bite some one else and thus spread these diseases. Screens for both doors and windows form the best protection against mosquitoes at all times ”