Malaria_Historical development, of the understanding of the cause of the disease

For over 50,000 years, Malaria has infected human. Symptoms of the disease have been recorded as early as 18 BC; however, it was not until the 1880s when Charles Laveran, a French army doctor studying parasites in the blood cells of people suffering from Malaria, linked the cause of the disease with the microorganisms, protozoa he observed. Later in 1885 two Italian scientists, Celli and Marchiafara observed that malaria was transmitted through infected blood. They also gave the malarial protozoa the name plasmodium. A year later in 1886, Golgi identified the asexual reproduction of the protozoan in infected blood. In 1898, the anopheles mosquito was suggested to be the vector by Bastianelli and Grassi. The plasmodium parasite was established to be the cause of malaria, a year later by Ronald Ross. He discovered that when non-infected humans were bitten by malarial infected mosquitoes, their red blood cells showed the presence of malarial parasites. He eventually in 1907 received the Nobel Prize for describing the complete life cycle of plasmodium.

Charles Laveran © The Nobel Foundation

Ronald Ross © The Nobel Foundation