Malaria was a common affliction in populations that lived beside the River Thames until the middle of the Victorian era, not only in its estuary, but even in central London. It was frequently lethal. Some cases continued to occur until early in the 20th century. Why malaria died out in England is rather unclear.
Malaria was commonplace in the Thames [2] marshes, including London, and was called "ague" or "marsh fever". While not all agues were caused by malaria, most [3] scholars believe true malaria – the protozoan infection – was indeed present. Descriptions in early 19th century medical textbooks leave little doubt, since:
they invariably refer to noncontagious transmission, distinctive cold, hot, and sweating stages, tertian onset of symptoms, cycling relapses, anemia, splenomegaly or 'ague cake' [an enlarged spleen], and susceptibility to quinine. [4]
It was mainly transmitted by the mosquito Anopheles atroparvus, [5] [6] and was frequently lethal. [7] It was so bad that most clergymen refused to reside in their parishes, where these were near the marshes. [8]
Possibly malaria was introduced by the Roman invaders; [9] evidence from skeletons suggests the disease was present in Anglo-Saxon England. [10]
It was anyway rife by the 16th century, [11] [3] though the climate (the "Little Ice Age") was colder than today. [12] James I and Oliver Cromwell were thought to have died of it, and it was prevalent in London before and after the Great Fire. [13] Shakespeare mentions ague in eight of his plays as if his London audiences would be familiar with aspects of the disease. [14]
Mary Dobson said that
in the low-lying parishes bordering the River Thames and the River Medway ... burial rates were three or four times as high as those of the healthiest downland communities. [15]
Writing around 1800, Edward Hasted noted
it is not unusual to see a poor man, his wife, and whole family of five or six children, hovering over their fire in their hovel, shaking with an ague all at the same time. [16]
The heavy use of opium (often consumed as poppy-head tea) [17] and alcohol to fight the fever was commonplace. [18] Later, the disease was combated with quinine; that this treatment was effective tends to confirm it was malaria, and not some unrelated malady. [19]
At Guy's Hospital they frequently received ague cases from the Thames marshes, William Gull told the House of Commons in 1854. About a half came from Woolwich and Erith, but cases also came from Wapping and Shadwell, and along the river from Bermondsey and Lambeth and even Westminster. (At that time it was believed the disease came from breathing bad air – mal-aria – arising from marshes. Gull recommended the marshes should be drained.) [20]
Generally, deaths started to decline after 1800, although there was a fairly sharp peak around 1860. Some cases occurred in all parts of England (and even in Scotland), but by far the worst area was in the Thames (and the fens of Cambridgeshire). [21]
By the end of the Victorian era indigenous [22] malaria had nearly disappeared from England, [23] but a few cases survived into the 20th century enabling the disease to be positively identified by blood tests. It was probably caused by the protozoan parasite Plasmodium vivax . [24] [9]
While the draining of the Thames marshes did not, by itself, eradicate malaria – in places the mosquito still abounds [25] – it may have been a contributory cause. [26] Why it did disappear is complex and uncertain. [27] The mosquito prefers to take blood from livestock, so increasing livestock densities (brought about by the introduction of root crops as winter fodder) [28] may have diverted biting from humans to domestic animals. Other factors may have included better housing, health care, sanitation and hygiene (by helping to reduce transmission rates), [4] smaller rural populations as manual labour was replaced by machinery, and better insulation of houses in winter. [28]
In 2002 the Chief Medical Officer predicted that by 2050 the British climate might so warm that indigenous malaria would be re-established. However, a paper by Kuhn et al in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , examining historical data, disagreed. Temperature and rainfall were just two factors tending to increase transmissibility of malaria, but wetland acreage and cattle population were more important. The projected climate change, by itself, was "clearly insufficient". [29]
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other vertebrates. Human malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, fatigue, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. Symptoms usually begin 10 to 15 days after being bitten by an infected Anopheles mosquito. If not properly treated, people may have recurrences of the disease months later. In those who have recently survived an infection, reinfection usually causes milder symptoms. This partial resistance disappears over months to years if the person has no continuing exposure to malaria.
Cinchona is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae containing at least 23 species of trees and shrubs. All are native to the tropical Andean forests of western South America. A few species are reportedly naturalized in Central America, Jamaica, French Polynesia, Sulawesi, Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, and São Tomé and Príncipe off the coast of tropical Africa, and others have been cultivated in India and Java, where they have formed hybrids.
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran was a French physician who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1907 for his discoveries of parasitic protozoans as causative agents of infectious diseases such as malaria and trypanosomiasis. Following his father, Louis Théodore Laveran, he took up military medicine as his profession. He obtained his medical degree from University of Strasbourg in 1867.
Plasmodium is a genus of unicellular eukaryotes that are obligate parasites of vertebrates and insects. The life cycles of Plasmodium species involve development in a blood-feeding insect host which then injects parasites into a vertebrate host during a blood meal. Parasites grow within a vertebrate body tissue before entering the bloodstream to infect red blood cells. The ensuing destruction of host red blood cells can result in malaria. During this infection, some parasites are picked up by a blood-feeding insect, continuing the life cycle.
Babesiosis or piroplasmosis is a malaria-like parasitic disease caused by infection with a eukaryotic parasite in the order Piroplasmida, typically a Babesia or Theileria, in the phylum Apicomplexa. Human babesiosis transmission via tick bite is most common in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States and parts of Europe, and sporadic throughout the rest of the world. It occurs in warm weather. People can get infected with Babesia parasites by the bite of an infected tick, by getting a blood transfusion from an infected donor of blood products, or by congenital transmission . Ticks transmit the human strain of babesiosis, so it often presents with other tick-borne illnesses such as Lyme disease. After trypanosomes, Babesia is thought to be the second-most common blood parasite of mammals. They can have major adverse effects on the health of domestic animals in areas without severe winters. In cattle the disease is known as Texas cattle fever or redwater.
Plasmodium falciparum is a unicellular protozoan parasite of humans, and the deadliest species of Plasmodium that causes malaria in humans. The parasite is transmitted through the bite of a female Anopheles mosquito and causes the disease's most dangerous form, falciparum malaria. It is responsible for around 50% of all malaria cases. P. falciparum is therefore regarded as the deadliest parasite in humans. It is also associated with the development of blood cancer and is classified as a Group 2A (probable) carcinogen.
High Halstow is a village and civil parish on the Hoo Peninsula in the unitary authority of Medway in South East England. It was, until 1998, administratively part of Kent and is still ceremonially associated via the Lieutenancies Act. The parish had a population of 1,781 according to the 2001 census, increasing to 1,807 at the 2011 census.
A trophozoite is the activated, feeding stage in the life cycle of certain protozoa such as malaria-causing Plasmodium falciparum and those of the Giardia group.
Plasmodium malariae is a parasitic protozoan that causes malaria in humans. It is one of several species of Plasmodium parasites that infect other organisms as pathogens, also including Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax, responsible for most malarial infection. Found worldwide, it causes a so-called "benign malaria", not nearly as dangerous as that produced by P. falciparum or P. vivax. The signs include fevers that recur at approximately three-day intervals – a quartan fever or quartan malaria – longer than the two-day (tertian) intervals of the other malarial parasite.
Mosquito control manages the population of mosquitoes to reduce their damage to human health, economies, and enjoyment. Mosquito control is a vital public-health practice throughout the world and especially in the tropics because mosquitoes spread many diseases, such as malaria and the Zika virus.
Malaria prophylaxis is the preventive treatment of malaria. Several malaria vaccines are under development.
Paul Reiter is a professor of medical entomology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France. He is a member of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Vector Biology and Control. He was an employee of the Center for Disease Control for 22 years. He is a specialist in the natural history, epidemiology and control of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever, West Nile fever, and malaria. He is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society.
The history of malaria extends from its prehistoric origin as a zoonotic disease in the primates of Africa through to the 21st century. A widespread and potentially lethal human infectious disease, at its peak malaria infested every continent except Antarctica. Its prevention and treatment have been targeted in science and medicine for hundreds of years. Since the discovery of the Plasmodium parasites which cause it, research attention has focused on their biology as well as that of the mosquitoes which transmit the parasites.
Disease in colonial America that afflicted the early immigrant settlers was a dangerous threat to life. Some of the diseases were new and treatments were ineffective. Malaria was deadly to many new arrivals, especially in the Southern colonies. Of newly arrived able-bodied young men, over one-fourth of the Anglican missionaries died within five years of their arrival in the Carolinas. Mortality was high for infants and small children, especially for diphtheria, smallpox, yellow fever, and malaria. Most sick people turned to local healers, and used folk remedies. Others relied upon the minister-physicians, barber-surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, and ministers; a few used colonial physicians trained either in Britain, or an apprenticeship in the colonies. One common treatment was blood letting. The method was crude due to a lack of knowledge about infection and disease among medical practitioners. There was little government control, regulation of medical care, or attention to public health. By the 18th century, Colonial physicians, following the models in England and Scotland, introduced modern medicine to the cities in the 18th century, and made some advances in vaccination, pathology, anatomy and pharmacology.
Mosquito-borne diseases or mosquito-borne illnesses are diseases caused by bacteria, viruses or parasites transmitted by mosquitoes. Nearly 700 million people get a mosquito-borne illness each year resulting in over 725,000 deaths.
Plasmodium coatneyi is a parasitic species that is an agent of malaria in nonhuman primates. P. coatneyi occurs in Southeast Asia. The natural host of this species is the rhesus macaque and crab-eating macaque, but there has been no evidence that zoonosis of P. coatneyi can occur through its vector, the female Anopheles mosquito.
Mosquito-malaria theory was a scientific theory developed in the latter half of the 19th century that solved the question of how malaria was transmitted. The theory proposed that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes, in opposition to the centuries-old medical dogma that malaria was due to bad air, or miasma. The first scientific idea was postulated in 1851 by Charles E. Johnson, who argued that miasma had no direct relationship with malaria. Although Johnson's hypothesis was forgotten, the arrival and validation of the germ theory of diseases in the late 19th century began to shed new lights. When Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran discovered that malaria was caused by a protozoan parasite in 1880, the miasma theory began to subside.
Disease ecology is a sub-discipline of ecology concerned with the mechanisms, patterns, and effects of host-pathogen interactions, particularly those of infectious diseases. For example, it examines how parasites spread through and influence wildlife populations and communities. By studying the flow of diseases within the natural environment, scientists seek to better understand how changes within our environment can shape how pathogens, and other diseases, travel. Therefore, diseases ecology seeks to understand the links between ecological interactions and disease evolution. New emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases are increasing at unprecedented rates which can have lasting impacts on public health, ecosystem health, and biodiversity.
Global climate change has increased the occurrence of some infectious diseases. Those infectious diseases whose transmission is impacted by climate change include for example the vector-borne diseases dengue fever, malaria, tick-borne diseases, leishmaniasis, zika fever, chikungunya and Ebola virus disease. One of the mechanisms for increased disease transmission is that climate change is altering the geographic range and seasonality of the insects that can carry the diseases. Scientists stated a clear observation in 2022: "the occurrence of climate-related food-borne and waterborne diseases has increased ."
Malaria was a severe epidemic in parts of Mandatory Palestine in the early 20th century, now located in Israel. The epidemic killed many people from the bible period until it was finally eradicated in the early 1960s. Malaria was originally a large obstacle to Zionist settlement, because it restricted the land that was usable for settlement, and affected the lifestyle of the Jewish settlers in Palestine.