First Cases of Malaria

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QUESTION

What is the first infected person with Plasmodium?

ANSWER

Plasmodium, the single-celled parasite which causes malaria, has been infecting humans since ancient times. In fact, the first written reference to its symptoms dates back almost 5000 years, to an ancient Chinese manuscript! It was also known from the writings of other ancient peoples, such as the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians; when Europeans arrived in the Americas, they found that local tribes had long recognised the dangers of malaria, and already had natural remedies for fever, including the bark of the cinchona tree, which was later used to make quinine (a moden anti-malarial). As such, it is impossible to say now who the first person infected with Plasmodium was, but it definitely occurred many thousands of years ago.

However, it was only until the late 19th century that people understood that Plasmodium parasites caused malaria, and knew how to observe the infection in the patient’s blood. This was done was Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, a French physician working in Algeria. As such, you could argue that the first person known to have Plasmodium was the patient he observed the parasite within, when he first described Plasmodium. Unfortunately, the patient had died of the disease; Laveran examined the blood after the patient had perished. I am not sure the patient’s name was recorded.

First Malaria Outbreak

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QUESTION

When was the first ever outbreak of malaria?

ANSWER

Malaria has actually been known in human populations for thousands of years, so the first ever outbreak occurred long before any records were kept. The ancient Chinese recorded the symptoms of malaria in a medical manuscript which dates back to 2700 BCE, so almost 5000 years ago!

The symptoms of malaria were also known to the ancient Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and native peoples of the Americas, though none of them fully understood the cause of the disease or how it was transmitted. That information was discovered in the late 19th century, by Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, who first observed malaria parasites in the blood of a patient and attributed them to the disease, and by Ronald Ross, who demonstrated that the malaria parasite was transmitted by mosquitoes.