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Perspective
The History of Malaria on Stamps
Postage stamps pay tribute to the scientists who helped understand and cure this deadly disease.
By Marc A. Shampo, Ph.D., and Robert A. Kyle, M.D.
Marc A. Shampo, Ph.D., and Robert A. Kyle, M.D., have published biographical vignettes of persons depicted on postage stamps in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Mayo Clinic Proceedings for the past four decades. The stamps in this article, which come from the personal collection of Dr. Shampo, illustrate important figures in the history of malaria.
Malaria has been recognized as a disease for more than 4,000 years. In 2700 BC, several characteristic symptoms were described in the Nei Ching (The Canon of Medicine), which was associated with the mythical Emperor Huang-Ti of China. The disease, which is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito, has determined the fate of nations, as it has been responsible for more military defeats than weapons themselves.
By the late 1800s, the disease was virtually eliminated in the United States and Europe after swamps were drained and mill ponds removed, eliminating the breeding grounds of mosquitoes. Still, malaria accounted for approximately 10 percent of deaths in the world and more than half the mortality in India in the early part of the 20th century. In its 2005 report on malaria, the World Health Organization stated that between 350 million and 500 million clinical episodes of the disease and at least 1 million deaths from malaria are reported each year. Most of those cases occur in sub-Saharan Africa.
The stamps featured in this article pay tribute to some of the scientists who played key roles in the discovery, treatment, and prevention of malaria.
Joseph B. Caventou and Pierre J. Pelletier
France, 1970, Scott no. 1268*
One of the most significant developments in the history of malaria was the discovery of quinine as a cure. Quinine was identified in the early 1600s in the bark of the cinchona tree (the so-called “fever tree”) of the Andes Mountains in Peru and Ecuador and was later used by Jesuits in Europe to treat malaria, which was then known as “the fever.” Initially, Protestants considered it the “powder of the devil,” and doctors rejected it, preferring to bleed patients instead. However, attitudes changed in 1679, when the bark was used to cure King Charles II of England and the son of King Louis XIV of France of “malaria fever.”
In 1820, two French scientists, Joseph B. Caventou (1795-1877) and Pierre J. Pelletier (1788-1842), isolated quinine from the tree’s bark. Both scientists were honored on a stamp issued by France on the 150th anniversary of their discovery.
Caventou and Pelletier are regarded as the founders of alkaloid chemistry and were awarded the Montyon Prize by the French Academy of Science for their isolation of quinine, which was used as a malaria treatment until the middle of the 20th century. In addition to quinine, the two scientists isolated chlorophyll from green leaves, strychnine, brucine, cinchonine, and caffeine.
*Stamp collectors use Scott numbers to identify specific stamps when buying and selling them.
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran
Algeria, 1954, Scott no. 252
French military surgeon Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran (1845-1922) discovered the cause of malaria in humans in 1880, when he noticed parasites within the red blood cells of a soldier suffering from the disease. Laveran studied the “pigment” of the livers and brains of patients who had died of malaria. He found that certain pigment granules showed amoeboid movement in the blood. Upon discovering those bodies were crescentic or spherical, he believed they were parasites. He became convinced when he found flagellation of the male crescent. Laveran thought that human malaria was mosquito-borne but did not test this theory.
In 1897, Laveran joined the Pasteur Institute and continued his research on malaria. He established the Laboratory of Tropical Diseases at the Institute in 1907. That same year, Laveran was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his lifelong work on protozoal diseases, including malaria.
Ronald Ross
Grenada Grenadines, 1995, Scott no. 1771c
British physician Ronald Ross (1857-1932) furthered Lavaran’s theory when he discovered that mosquitoes were indeed the source of malaria. He identified malarial organisms in the stomach of the Anopheles mosquito in 1897. Ross later showed that malaria could be transferred from bird to bird by mosquitoes that had fed on malaria-infected birds.
Ross was born in Almora, Nepal. He received his medical degree from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London in 1879, after which he went to India to serve in the Anglo-Burmese War. In 1888, he returned to England and became interested in malaria, which he found was prevalent in India.
The following year, Ross returned to India and began the microscopic study of the blood of patients with malaria.
In 1899, Ross returned to England to join the School of Tropical Medicine and Tropical Pathology at the University of Liverpool. Although his work was not fully appreciated at the time, Ross subsequently received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on malaria. In 1910, he wrote a definitive work on the disease, The Prevention of Malaria.
Giovanni Battista Grassi
Italy, 1955, Scott no. 701
In his work as a physician, zoologist, and parasitologist, Giovanni Battista Grassi (1854-1925) was convinced that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes. He studied all varieties of mosquitoes native to the swamps of Rome. From those studies, he discovered, independently, the Anopheles type as the true carrier of malaria, unaware of the work of Ronald Ross. However, Grassi failed to identify the actual parasite carried by the insect.
Camillo Golgi
Sweden, 1966, Scott no. 711
Italian biologist and pathologist Camillo Golgi (1843-1926) who became famous for his study of the nervous system, showed that 1) different forms of malaria were caused by different parasites, 2) the severity of the malarial attack depended on the number of parasites in the blood, and 3) the malarial paroxysm coincided with the sporulation of the parasite.
From 1885 to 1893, Golgi, a professor of general pathology at the University of Pavia, concentrated on malaria research. His investigations led to the discovery that all the malarial parasites in the blood divide almost simultaneously and at regular intervals, with the moment of division coinciding with the onset of fever. Golgi described two types of intermittent malarial fever: tertian (occurring every other day) and quartan (occurring every third day).
Julius Wagner-Jauregg
Austria, 1957, Scott no. 615
An unexpected contribution concerning malaria came in 1919 when Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940) discovered that malaria had therapeutic value.
In 1883, Wagner-Jauregg became a member of the psychiatric staff at the University of Vienna, serving until 1889. It was as an assistant at the university that he proposed, in 1887, treating psychosis by deliberately inducing fever in mentally ill patients. At the time, he believed that such treatment might cure psychiatric disease.
Initially, he saw limited success in using fever to treat mental illness. He then turned to testing it on patients with general paresis, which occurs during the tertiary phase of syphilis. Malaria, which produces recurring high fevers, was a possible choice as an inoculant, but Wagner-Jauregg feared that it was too dangerous a disease to spread intentionally.
It wasn’t until 1917 that Wagner-Jauregg induced tertian malaria in nine patients who had progressive paralysis. He reported that when the malaria was treated with quinine early enough, 85 percent of patients with paralytic dementia could be cured. It was believed that the malarial infection stimulated the immune system or that the high temperature of the fever killed the spirochetes directly.
Over the next few years, Wagner-Jauregg and his colleagues developed malaria strains, established appropriate dosages, and determined how long the fever should be allowed to persist before curing the patient with quinine. Wagner-Jauregg was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the therapeutic value of malaria inoculation in the treatment of dementia paralytica.
Paul Müller
Grenada Grenadines, 1995, Scott no. 1771d
Another scientist who played an important role in the history of malaria was Swiss chemist Paul Müller (1899-1965). Müller discovered the insecticide DDT (4,4-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), which seemed ideal for killing mosquitoes and, thus, for controlling malaria.
Müller was working for the J.R. Geigy Company of Basel as a research chemist in 1935 when he turned his attention to developing an insecticide that was toxic to insects yet did not harm animals or plants, was widely effective, worked for a long time, and was inexpensive. After testing hundreds of different chemicals, Müller synthesized DDT in 1939. It was found to be particularly effective until mosquito strains developed resistance to the insecticide.
In 1948, Müller received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the potent toxic effects of DDT on mosquitoes. MM
Marc Shampo is an emeritus member of the Section of Scientific Publications at Mayo Clinic. Robert Kyle is a professor of medicine, laboratory medicine, and pathology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.
Acknowledgment
Editing, proofreading, and reference verification were provided by the Section of Scientific Publications, Mayo Clinic.