A great many U.S. Presidents suffered from insect-borne illnesses, and malaria was one of the most frequent afflictions. Presidents who most likely had malaria included George Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, James Garfield,… Read More
The French company that began construction on the Panama Canal in 1880 employed 86,800 workers. Of those, 52,816 fell ill, mostly with malaria and yellow fever. The company went bankrupt in 1888.
The Alarming History of Medicine, page… Read More
I have a book coming out next year about the effect of insects on human history. As you might imagine, malaria figures into the book pretty heavily, as it’s been a terrible scourge of a disease since ancient times. And… Read More
I was helping my middle schooler study for his big American History test a few days ago, which focused on westward expansion in the early nineteenth century—you know, Manifest Destiny, the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark, and including events leading… Read More
As part of my research for my new book about insects, I’ve been reading a lot about malaria prophylaxis (that is, preventing malaria). For centuries, cinchona powder was the only known successful treatment for malaria. It was made from the… Read More
In 1495, an epidemic of syphilis spread from Naples across Europe. (It probably reached Europe from the New World by way of Columbus’s ships.) The English called it the French pox. The French called it the English pox.