CHAPTER XVI 

 MALARIAL FEVERS 



HTHE discovery of the malarial parasite may justly 

 be considered one of the greatest achievements 

 of scientific research during the nineteenth century. 

 We owe it to Laveran, a surgeon in the French 

 army, who made the discovery in 1880 while sta- 

 tioned in Algeria. His painstaking microscopical 

 researches convinced him that the blood of patients 

 suffering from malarial fever contains living amoe- 

 boid parasites which in one stage of their develop- 

 ment invade the red blood corpuscles and lead to 

 their destruction. Subsequent researches in various 

 parts of the world have made it evident that this 

 blood parasite is in fact the malarial germ and the 

 cause of the phenomena which characterise fevers of 

 this class. It has also been demonstrated that the 

 disease is transmitted to man by mosquitoes of the 

 genus Anopheles, in the bodies of which the para- 

 site passes through certain stages of development, 



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