"Reasons for contentment": malaria in India, 1900-1920.

Although Ronald Ross carried out his pioneering investigations on the role of the mosquito in the transmission of malaria in India, antimalarial activities in the sub-continent were disappointing. After the unsuccessful attempt at mosquito control at the military cantonment at Mian Mir (near Lahore, present day Pakistan), quinine prophylaxis was adopted as a compromise solution. While this strategy also failed, a good deal of important work was carried out in India in the first two decades of the twentieth century, so that by the 1920s, the magnitude of the malaria problem was fully appreciated.