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What year was the cause of malaria discovered?

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QUESTION

When did they find out that a bug bite caused malaria, and what year was that?

ANSWER

In 1880, Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran observed that malaria was caused by a parasite in the blood; it wasn’t until 1897-1898 that Ronald Ross, a British Army medical doctor, discovered that the parasite could be transmitted between hosts (he used birds for his experiments) by mosquitoes.