When Europeans began living in, and eventually colonizing, African and Asian territories, many tried to live as they did in Europe. Victorian ballroom music could have been their music. Of course they were surrounded by people who lived differently, as they had lived for a millenia - which to the Europeans was poor. The result was that they, the Europeans, lived apart, like gods - as Ronald Ross described the way his parents lived in India.

Since that was the life he knew, Ross started his career the same way, as a medical officer in India, living apart, golfing, fishing, writing poetry and romance novels. He eventually became a respectable world-renown scientist, doing much of the original research to establish the cause of malaria. But old ways of living die hard; his memories of living apart crept into his own recommendations for malaria control.

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