History of Malaria

Malaria parasites have been with us since the dawn of time. Hippocrates was the first, in the fifth century BC, to describe in detail the clinical picture of malaria and some complications of the disease and relate them to the time of year and where the patients lived. The association with stagnant waters (breeding grounds for its Anopheline vector) led the Romans to begin drainage programs, the first intervention against malaria. The first recorded treatment dates back to 1600, where the native Peruvian Indians used the bitter bark of the cinchona tree in Peru. By 1649, the bark was available in England, as 'Jesuits powder' so that those suffering from 'agues' (malaria) might benefit from the quinine it contained. Malaria in the United Kingdom could have been clustered around stagnant marshes, and the invading Roman soldiers could certainly have brought the disease with them. There have been no recent cases of infective mosquito bites within the UK so this is certainly not an endemic region any more.

It was not until the 1880s, that the protozoal cause of malaria was elucidated. The French army surgeon, Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran was the first to observe the malaria parasite in the blood of an Algerian patient. Only in 1897 was the Anopheles mosquito demonstrated to be the vector for the disease.