The world of insects has a new leader. Cockroaches have taken over. These ancient roaches have metamorphosed from pests into new-age revolutionaries. While the other mortals of the insect kingdom continue going about their business, with no halo ever assigned to them, they do, to be fair, get their brief moments in the spotlight. And today, it’s the pesky mosquito’s turn.
August 20 is World Mosquito Day! It may seem unbelievable that a day has been set aside in our busy calendars for this annoying gnat. The purpose, however, is a noble one. The day commemorates the discovery of the malaria parasite by Sir Ronald Ross in 1897, proving that female Anopheles mosquitoes transmit malaria. The day is observed annually to raise awareness about the dangers posed by mosquitoes and the measures that can be taken to prevent the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.
Most Indian citizens have, over time, evolved into veterans at tackling this irritating species. A well-aimed swat or a dose of insect repellent is usually all it takes. There is, of course, no foolproof way to avoid them completely. But then, how did this tiny menace make its way into art history?
Long before Sir Ronald Ross made his discovery, mosquitoes were not associated with disease. Early paintings assigned bad air from swamps and marshes to be the cause of malaria. Most landscape art back then, showed wetlands as uncanny, ominous environments. The diseases themselves, which ideally ought to have been represented as blood-sucking insects, were, for want of understanding, personified instead as eerie figures or pernicious angels.
The mosquito first began appearing in art as illustration. In 1900, an experiment to establish the link between mosquitoes and malaria was undertaken and the artist Amedeo John Engel Terzi was invited to visually document the findings. Living inside a mosquito-proof hut in an area infested with them, a team of three men carried out the experiment until they themselves contracted the disease. It was under such circumstances that artists like Terzi became indispensable to science. Photography was next to impossible then and Terzi’s precise, hand-drawn illustrations served to identify the exact species that transmitted malaria. His drawings also became valuable teaching tools for students. At a time when high-quality imaging simply did not exist, these painstaking visuals were often the only way to study the parasite’s lifecycle.
Sadly, although Terzi produced around 37,000 illustrations, along with wax models, he was never given his due for his immense contribution. When he died in 1955, there wasn’t even an obituary to mark his passing. History books have rarely mentioned him, leaving the man who helped mankind see the invisible, almost invisible himself.
The world may have progressed at alarming speed since then. Technology may have crossed frontiers and medical science may have conquered diseases that once seemed invincible. Yet, it is worth pausing to recognise artists like Terzi, who helped bridge the gap between academic theories and visible realities. His meticulous mosquito drawings were not merely illustrations — they became essential tools in the study of malaria. Who ever said that science and art couldn’t go hand in hand? One helped us understand what the other helped us see!
