The existence of malaria as an enemy of human kind certainly predates written history for thousands of year. Malaria has been a deadly scourge, and it remains one today. From American president john Adam who nearly succumbed to malaria in Amsterdam while on a diplomatic mission, back down the time line to the early Chinese, Greeks and Romans, malaria has not spared its victims rich or poor.
It wasn’t until 19th century that the information about the true causes of malaria became known. Yet despite the knowledge, malaria still ravages sub –Sahara Africa, south east, Asia and Latin America, taking as its victims mainly young children and pregnant women . malaria parasite was discovered by Charles Louis Alphonse laveran on 20 October 1880 while examining blood from a solider suffering from malaria. Dr Laveran saw crescent shaped bodies that were nearly transparent except for one small dot of pigment after examining blood from 192 other malaria patients to be identified the same crescent in 148 of the sample. Later he recognized the four distinct forms in human blood that would prove to be the malaria parasite in different stages of its life cycle . Laveran received the noble prize in 1907 for the discovery of the single –celled protozoa that causes malaria
On 20 august 1897, Ronald a British officer in the India medicine service was the first to demonstrate that malaria parasites could be transmitted from infected patients to mosquitoes. He also demonstrated in his investigations of bird malaria that mosquitoes could transmit malaria parasites from bird to bird. Ross was awarded the Nobel prize for his discovery in 1902.
In 1898 -1899 a group of Italian scientist (G. Crrassi, A Bignami, G- Bastianelli, A. Dionisi, A. Cell) confirmed that human malaria parasites pass through the same developmental stages in the mosquito as the bird parasites observed by Ross.
1n 1948, the malaria parasite was discovered in the human tissue, malaria parasites was detected in the liver at rhesus monkeys infected with the primate species . They found similar stages in the livers of humans infected with p vivax and later confirmed the same for p. falciparum. This public health work saved the lines of thousands of workers and developed the method used in future public health campaign against this disease.
The first effective treatment of malaria came from the bark at cinchona tree, which contain quinine. This tree grows on the slopes at the andes mainly in peru. A tincture made of this natural product was used by the inhabitants of peru to control malaria and the jesuist introduced this practice to Europe during the 1840s where it was rapidly accepted. It was not useful in 1820 that the active ingredient quinine was extracted from the bark of cinchona tree, and isolated by the French chemists pierre Joseph pelletetier and Joseph bienaime caventon.
In the early twentieth century, before antibodies, patients with syphilis were intentionally infected with malaria to create a fever following the work of Julius Wanger Jaurogy by accurately controlling the fever with quinine, the effects of both syphilis and malaria could be minimized.
Although the blood stage and mosquito stages of the malaria life cycle were identified in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was not until 1980s that the latent form of the parasite was observed . the discovery of this latent form of the parasitic finally explained why people could appear to be cured of malarial but still relapse years after the parasite had disappeared from their blood stream.
Related Posts: MALARIA, MICROBIOLOGY
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