Arboviruses Pt2: Mosquitoes and Malaria

Hey Poison Friends! I know I promised a lot for this one episode, including West Nile, Zika, EEE, and Malaria. The truth is, malaria is just a huge topic on its own and instead of keeping you all here for hours at one time, we are discussing malaria in all of its old and new world glory, so to speak. I will be adding an extra bonus on our Patreon later this week that will be free for all for those still interested in West Nile/Zika, so come check that out there.

The parasite that causes malaria is actually older than us humans and since humans entered the scene, they have been our nemesis. Mosquitoes are known to be, historically, the deadliest animal simply because of how many people have died due to malaria that they have transmitted.

We are discussing the history of humankind vs mosquito/malaria and how various people groups of different eras attempted to deal with the disease. From the ancient Egyptians, to the Greeks, the Romans, ancient China, and those living throughout the middle ages in Europe. Previous notions were that malaria came from "bad air" and, in fact, the name comes from the Italian for "bad air." The Miasma and Humors theories were still prevalent in medicine, of course, until the true means of infection were discovered in the late 1800s.

Also, we cannot leave out its historic prevalence in Africa and its later history among the American colonies, the Native Americans (indigenous groups in North and South America), Oceania, and among and throughout the African slave trade. History has been a doozy, lets be honest, and mosquitoes (and malaria) have witnessed it all. They even had their effects on historical events like the Fall of Rome, the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWII, etc. We are delving into the science as well, discussing who discovered its causal agent and who found how it was transmitted via mosquito.

Needless to say, the war with malaria has been awful through the centuries and in Sub-Saharan Africa, it still is. The disease is also still prevalent in Southeast Asia and in South America. So what have been the historic methods of treatment and how far have we come in this fight?

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