• Question: how did people come across malaria?

    Asked by 08abarnes to Ailsa, Evan, James, Kath, Ryan on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Evan Keane

      Evan Keane answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I think this question is not really for me, but I think it is from certain types of mosquito isn’t it?

    • Photo: Ryan Ladd

      Ryan Ladd answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I didn’t know the answer to this question so I checked it out on Wikipedia! It seems like humans didn’t discover malaria but that it discovered humans!

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_malaria

    • Photo: Ailsa Powell

      Ailsa Powell answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Evan is certainly correct in that you get Malaria from certain types of mosquito (fortunately not the ones in the UK!).

      But if you are wondering who discovered Malaria it’s complicated as it is a disease older than humans and monkeys and apes suffered from it before humans evolved from them. So it has always been a disease that humans have suffered from. Interestingly the connection to mosquitos is fairly recent. Up until the 19th century it was assumed that the bad smelling air from swamps caused the disease, the name Malaria comes from the old Italian mal’aria which means “bad air”. It was’t until 1880 that someone made the discovery that parasites were responsible for the disease and then in 1897 the link to mosquito bites transferring the parasites to people was made. So in terms of the entire history of the disease it’s only very recently, the last 110 years or so, since we’ve known what causes it.

      Hope that answers your question 🙂

    • Photo: Kath O'Reilly

      Kath O'Reilly answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Ailsa is the specialist here…

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