CHAPTER VIII 

 THE MALARIAL PARASITE 



PLASMODIUM (v. H.EMAMCEBA) MALARLE, VIAVX, 

 AND IMMACULATUM 



OF the various ills that mankind is subject to, none is 

 more widespread or more destructive than the fever known 

 as malaria, ague or marsh-fever. It probably takes a higher 

 toll of human life than any other disease. In India it has 

 been estimated that 40 per centum of the annual death rate 

 is due to various kinds of malarial fever, which therefore claims 

 six times as many victims as cholera. Malaria has destroyed 

 armies, as in the case of the ill-fated Walcheren expedition in 

 1809,* has ruined cities and depopulated large tracts of country. 

 A disease so disastrous has naturally engaged the attention of 

 the medical profession from the earliest times, and even among 

 the ancient Romans various theories were current to account 

 for its causation and dissemination. But it was only in 1882 

 that A. Laveran, a medical officer in the French army, dis- 

 covered the true cause of the disease in a sporozoon parasite 

 infesting the red blood corpuscles, and scarcely a decade has 

 elapsed since the whole life history of the parasite has been 

 worked out. Malaria occurs in tropical and temperate climates 

 all over the world, with the exception of some oceanic islands, 

 but is not known in high northern and southern latitudes. It 

 was formerly endemic in certain parts of England, especially 

 in the Fens and in the low-lying country bordering on the 



* From the 28th August to the 23rd of December, out of an effective 

 strength of 39,219 men, 4175 succumbed to fever. From the 2ist of 

 August to the l8th of November the number of admissions to the hospitals, 

 including recurrent cases, rose to 26,846. Towards the end of December 

 1809, after the return of the troops to England, 11,503 men were still 

 reckoned as suffering from " Walcheren sickness." The English army had 

 been vanquished before it had joined combat ; only 217 men had been 

 killed by the enemy (A. Laveran, Traite de Paludisme, Paris, 1898). 



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