19 questions · 8 almanac · 0 findings

Malaria

The disease, its parasite, and efforts to control it.

Almanac Mosquito Day in a Surgeon's Diary
  • What did Ronald Ross find in the stomach wall of an Anopheles mosquito on Mosquito Day, 20 August 1897?
  • How did Ross trace the malaria parasite's path through a mosquito's body to prove transmission?
  • What practical public-health strategy followed directly from Ross's discovery?
  • Where was mosquito-control logic applied successfully enough to measurably cut malaria deaths?
Almanac Bad Air Was Never the Culprit
  • What did the miasma theory of malaria claim, and where did that idea originally come from?
  • Which Italian researchers confirmed and extended Ross's work on the mosquito transmission cycle?
  • What priority dispute arose between Ross and the Italian research group, and why?
Almanac Small Creatures, Moving, in the Blood
  • What exactly did Laveran see under the microscope that led him to identify the cause of malaria?
  • Why was it significant that Laveran identified a protozoan, rather than a bacterium, as the cause of a human disease?
  • Why did it take twenty-seven years between Laveran's discovery and his Nobel Prize?
Almanac Curing One Fever With Another
  • How did Wagner-Jauregg use malaria to treat neurosyphilis?
  • What observation led Wagner-Jauregg to try inducing fever in his patients?
Almanac A Wall That Kept Killing Mosquitoes
  • Why was DDT's tendency to persist on surfaces for months so useful for malaria-control programmes?
  • How did DDT spraying campaigns change malaria rates in Southern Europe, Africa, and South Asia after World War II?
Almanac Mosquitoes Prefer Your Feet, and Cheese
  • Why are malaria-carrying mosquitoes especially attracted to human feet?
  • What shared bacteria connects the smell of Limburger cheese to the smell of feet?
  • How did this finding lead to a practical tool for controlling mosquito populations?