French: Paludisme. German: Wechselfieber.
History and Geographical Distribution
History.—Hippocrates, who considered malaria as intimately connected with bile, divided the disease into quotidian, tertian and quartan, differentiating such types of fever from continuous fevers. It is interesting to note that Celsus recognized two types of tertian fever, the one benign and similar to quartan fever, the other far more dangerous, with a fever occupying thirty-six of the forty-eight hours, not entirely subsiding in the remission, but being only mitigated.
In the time of Caesar views were expressed by Varro that swamp air might be the cause of malaria and furthermore that animals, so small that the eye could not follow them, might transmit diseases by way of the mouth or nose.
In the view of our present knowledge it is remarkable that Lancisi, in 1718, should have associated marshes with the development of gnats, which insects he thought could not only introduce with their proboscides the putrefying organic matter of such swamps but animalcules as well.
In 1638 Countess del Chinchon, the wife of the Viceroy of Peru, was cured of an intermittent fever by the employment of the bark of certain trees which bark was introduced into Europe in 1640. The origin of the name cinchona is thus explained.
While Morton and Sydenham in 1666 noted the specific action of cinchona in certain fevers it remained for Torti, in 1753, by the use of cinchona, clinically to differentiate those fevers which were cured by cinchona from those which failed to yield to this specific. Quinine was not introduced until after 1820. Audouard, in 1803, was the first to draw attention to the splenic enlargement of malaria.
The views of Nott and Beauperthuis as to transmission of malaria and yellow fever by insects are considered under the latter disease.
In 1847 Meckel announced that the dark color of malarial organs was due to a pigment and in 1848 Virchow noted that this pigment was contained in cells. In 1875, Kelsch observed pigmented bodies in malarial blood and in 1880 came to the conclusion that these pigmented cells were diagnostic of malaria.