Abstract
OUR knowledge of the disease called malarial fever first emerges from chaos in the seventeenth century, when, owing to the recent discovery of quinine, the great Italian physician, Torti, was able to differentiate this malady from other fevers, and to describe its symptoms with accuracy. Next century Morton, Lancisi, Pringle and others observed the connection of the disease with stagnant water and low-lying ground, and first emitted the theory—which in one form or another has found general acceptance up to the present date—that the fever is due to a miasm which rises from the soil or water of malarious localities. The next great advance was made in the middle of the nineteenth century by Meckel, Virchow and Frerichs, who ascertained that the distinguishing pathological product of the disease is a black substance, which is distributed in collections of minute coal-black or brown granules in the blood and organs of patients, and which is called the malarial pigment or melanin. This line of research culminated in the great discovery of Laveran in 1880—to the effect that the melanin is produced within the bodies of vast numbers of minute parasites which live in the red blood-corpuscles of the patient.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Malaria and Mosquitoes 1 . Nature 61, 522–527 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/061522a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/061522a0