Malaria Combat in Italy

of this success story is a remarkable piece of historical work. Original, crystal-clear, analytical and passionate, Snowden (who has previously written about cholera) takes us to areas historians have rarely visited before. B Everybody now knows that malaria is carried by mosquitoes. Malaria has always been the subject of research for medical practitioners from time immemorial. However, many ancient texts, especially medical literature, mention of various aspects of malaria and even of its possible link with mosquitoes and insects. Early man, confronting the manifestations of malaria, attributed the fevers to supernatural influences: evil spirits, angered deities, or the black magic of sorcerers. But in the 19th century, most experts believed that the disease was not produced by unclean air (“miasma” or “poisoning of the air”). Two Americans, Josiah Clark Nott and Lewis Daniel Beauperthy, echoed Crawford’s ideas. Nott in his essay “Yellow Fever Contrasted with Bilious Fever,” published in 1850, dismissed the miasma theory as worthless, arguing that microscopic insects somehow transmitted by mosquitoes caused both malaria and yellow fever. Others made a link between swamps, water and malaria, but did not make the…