Malaria was rife in the Malay peninsula and islands of the archipelago from time immemorial. It kills its victims quickly and often. In 1829, forty years after Penang Island was first occupied, one-third of all deaths were attributed to malaria. Plans for the cultivation of rubber almost failed because of malaria. When you cleared the land to set up a plantation the workers died in droves. That was the problem that faced Dr Malcolm Watson when he started work in his ‘clinic’ in Klang as District Surgeon fresh from the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1901. Malcolm Watson had this to say in his diary. He wrote “It occurred to me that ward after ward might be built to accommodate the increasing number of patients without any very substantial advantage to the community… It was clear to me that, even at the risk of being accused of neglecting my patients and ‘wasting my time on research’ it was my duty to spend some of my time in studying the disease outside of the wards and to make some attempt to prevent people from getting the disease.” He conducted an experiment. Klang at that time was surrounded by a large swamp and for the previous five years it had been swept by malaria with a recorded death rate of 160 per 1,000. Malcolm Watson obtained $30,000 for the Sanitary Board to drain the swamps and the results were spectacular.