Malaria: History, discovery of the parasite

Malaria was a well-studied disease in the West until the middle of the 20^th century. Until that time the disorder was still endemic in North America and large parts of Europe. It was a significant impediment for the European nations during the colonial period. Malaria also played a large part in the wars of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. For many years it had been known that people who died of malaria had large amounts of black pigment in their liver, kidneys, spleen and bone marrow. Yet the cause of this disorder long remained a riddle. In 1880 the French army doctor Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran discovered malaria parasites in fresh blood from a chronic malaria patient in the coastal town of Bone (Annaba), Algeria. He also observed exflagellation (see below), which normally only takes place in the stomach of the mosquito.

The names which were given to the microscopic organisms were “Laverania falcipara” and “Oscillaria malariae”. At that time there were as yet no staining techniques, and microscopes were quite primitive with a limited magnification. In 1884 the German Ernst Karl Abbe, together with Carl Zeiss, developed the oil immersion lens and a few years later the optical condenser, which allowed a greater magnification and clearer, sharper views.

The Russian Dimitri Romanowsky developed a staining method based on methylene blue. The findings of Laveran could now be verified by others. Laveran received the Nobel prize in 1907.

Category: Medicine Notes