Orgin and Cure of Malaria!

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
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Jude Ignatius (JI)
from Coimbatore

In the 3rd century, people didn`t know that Malaria existed. So they thought it was a normal fever or cold. During the 3rd century, the doctors recommended people shivering with fever, to wear an amulet prescribed with the word, abracadabra, and then, after nine days, the people with the disease have to throw the amulet into a stream which is flowing eastwards.                           Malaria comes from 2 Latin words, Malus and Aria and also from 2 Italian words, Mala and Aria, both of the Latin words and Italian words mean the same thing. Malus or Mala means Evil, and Aria mean Air in both the languages. So Malus Aria or Mala Aria means Evil Air.
                           The people used to wonder how they got the disease. They thought that they get the disease due to the foul vapour that rises from the marshy lands. Malaria was also called Swamp Fever.

                           The foul vapour theory continued till the 19th century and was later proved wrong, with the help of the discovery of the malarial parasite. The German doctor, Johaan Heinrich Meckel observed black granules in the blood and spleen of a patient who had died of malaria. These were actually malaria parasites.

                            Later, in 1880 a french army doctor, Alphonse Lavaran working in Algeria, identified the malarial parasites in the blood of infected patients. He also noted that, when treated with quinine, the parasite vanished from the blood.
                            But it was in India, where the story was completed. On 20th of August, 1897, Sir Ronald Ross, a British doctor working on the subcontinent, discovered that the parasites had developed in the Anopheles Mosquitoes that drank the blood of the malaria patients.
                            This won him the 1902 Nobel Prize for medicine. Indian Tonic Water or now known as Tonic, was a preventive drink against malaria.
                         
                            Quinny the malaria medicine was bitter so the British added soda and sugar to make it easier to drink.

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