Abstract
Malaria occupied a special place during the First World War, owing to the fact that the geographical extensions of the war and the number of fighters put a large number of soldiers in a malarial arcas, producing big sanitary and military disasters. The Macedonian front became an enormous experimental field for malaria research and especially for the evaluation of the therapeutic and prophylactic efficacy of quinine, as the traditional antimalarial activities (bonification, mechanical protection) were impossible to realize during the war.
Furthermore, the war was the first in Europe after the ‘golden age’ of malariology the scientific discoveries on the malarial aetiology and transmission cycle. Those discoveries raised great hopes of getting rid of this millenary scourge, thanks to a few scientifically sounded prophylactic and therapeutic activities. The great epidemics during the war and the fear of new outbreaks of malaria after it broke down the optimist, pushing malariologists to reconsider the need for deeper epidemiological and scientific studies of malaria.
The paper analyses three principal aspects of the relation between war and malaria: a) the impact of malaria on military operations; b) the impact of the war on the epidemiology of malaria in military and civil regions; c) the consequences of the experiences during the war on the antimalarial activities.
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Fantini, B. (2003). Malaria and the First World War. In: Eckart, W.U., Gradmann, C. (eds) Die Medizin und der Erste Weltkrieg. Neuere Medizin- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte Quellen und Studien, vol 3. Centaurus Verlag & Media, Herbolzheim. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-86226-369-1_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-86226-369-1_14
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