This section is from the book "Malaria, Influenza And Dengue", by Julius Mennaberg and O. Leichtenstern. Also available from Amazon: Malaria, influenza and dengue.
* Bellos (Athens) declares there is a complete identity between the fevers described by Hippocrates and those occurring too dday in Greece.
** The goddess of fever (Mefitis) had a temple on the Capitol. She was represented as an emaciated, half nude, bald headed, horrid figure, with a huge belly and swollen veins. That malaria played a role in public affairs at the time of the empire is evident from Horace's letter to Maecenas ("Epistolarum," lib. i, ep. 7, vi ad Maecenam). Horace begs Maecenas to extend his leave of absence, so as to permit him to remain away during the intensest of the summer heat, for when the first figs ripen and faces become pallid from fever, the chief of the funeral pomps (designator), with his black assistants, is very active, and the reading of wills becomes the order of the day (Jilek).
We will often discuss Torti's views in the following pages, and will, therefore, refrain from repeating them now.
Morton's highly interesting book contains, besides a broad discussion of the action of quinin based on a large experience, the first germ of an etiologic idea since Galen's time.
The notion of a connection between the condition of the ground and the meteorologic and climatic conditions and malaria was introduced and popularized especially by Lancisi. He was, moreover, the first who endeavored to demonstrate this question experimentally; and, likewise, the first to remark the strikingly dark color of the liver in fatal cases of malaria.
An acquisition to the subject in the eighteenth century that is worthy of mention was de Haen's demonstration of the rise of temperature during the chill.
It was owing to the progressive colonization, during the eighteenth century, of the various parts of the world outside of Europe that a knowledge of the wide geographic distribution of malarial diseases was acquired (Lind, Pringle), though with it came new difficulties in the differentiation of malaria from other endemic tropical diseases, as yellow fever. The separation of these was the work of pathologic investigation in the nineteenth century.
On one hand, the pigmentation of the organs and the blood of malarial cases had become more and more striking (Bailly, Folchi); on the other, the characteristic lesions of that disease most difficult to differentiate from malaria , namely, typhoid fever, were found in the small intestine by Prost, Bretonneau, Louis, Gerhard, and Pen nock.
An important epoch in the history of malaria was introduced by Heinrich Meckel's discovery (1847) of the pigment and the pigmented corpuscles. This discovery was made possible by the work of Vir chow, Heschl, Planer, and Frerichs. Yet we must not forget the clinical work of Maillot, Haspel, Leon Colin, Griesinger, Le Roy de Mericourt, Berenger-Feraud, Corre, Morehead, Fayrer, Baccelli, Tom aselli, Karamitsas, and Hertz in the rearrangement of the new material, nor that of Kelsch and Kiener, based on recently discovered facts. All added a wealth of clinical and anatomic knowledge to the subject.
Simultaneously, every effort was made to solve the etiology. After many futile endeavors to find the disease excitant, the existence of which had long been surmised (Mitchell, Salisbury, Eklund, Tommasi-Crudeli, and others), Laveran succeeded, in November, 1880. Several years of skepticism followed, but eventually Laveran;s discovery, which opened up the third epoch of malarial investigation, conquered the medical world. There is scarcely a known malarial focus on the earth where this discovery has not been confirmed. A large number of investigators at once took up the study of the development of the disease from this point of view, though, remarkable to say, the greatest number of these were found among the Italians and the fewest among the compatriots of the discoverer. Some of the names that must be mentioned in this regard are Golgi, Marchiafava, Celli, Grassi, Feletti, Bignami, Bastianelli, Romanowsky, Di Mattei, Osier, Thayer, Hewetson, Manson, Sakharoff, and Metschnikoff.
To this time also belongs the discovery of Gerhardt that malaria could be transmitted by the inoculation of the blood of a patient. Nor should we fail to mention the discovery of quinin by Pelletier and Caventou (1820).
 
Continue to:
mosquito, malaria, influenza, dengue, symptoms, outbreaks, diseases, hemoglobinuria, infections