Malaria was common across half the world - since then it has been eliminated in many regions The British colonial officers stationed in malarious India therefore started to add sugar, lime, and gin to it, and thereby created a drink that is still popular today: gin and tonic. But quinine is so bitter that tonic water, with concentrations high enough to be effective against malaria, was unpleasant to drink. Quinine powder was either drunk with wine or dissolved in water, a mixture that became known as “tonic water”. One of the first treatments people discovered against malaria was quinine, which came from an extract from the bark of the cinchona tree in South America. This disease that was powerful enough to afflict the mightiest armies also left its mark on the fate of societies and the lives of many other regions of the world. The disease enfeebled the mightiest army of the ancient world directly through epidemics and indirectly by reducing the productivity in the agricultural sector and hastened the fall of Rome. Malaria is thought to have been a secret ally that helped the Germanic and other tribes bring about the downfall of Rome.īy examining the teeth and bones of the Romans, archaeologists have brought together more and more evidence that the mosquito-borne fever once thrived in the warm, marshy river valleys of the Tiber and the Po in the Roman empire. Malaria did not only leave its mark on our bodies, but in many ways also on our history. The prevalence of sickle cell disorder today is a testament to the high-malaria environments in our species’ history. Why would such a genetic mutation not die out? The reason for the continued existence is that sickle cell disorder hinders the malaria parasite from reproducing, which means people who are carriers of the mutation - with one out of two mutations for it - have a protective advantage in environments where malaria exists. Tens of thousands of people globally die from the disease each year. Carriers suffer from attacks of pain from a young age and their lives are cut short by the condition. It is a genetic condition that deforms red blood cells to be sickle-shaped. Sickle cell disorder is one of these marks. The history of humanity is so closely entangled with the history of malaria that the disease left its mark on our bodies. 2įor most of that time, humanity was exposed to the disease without any defense. Humanity’s fight against malaria has a history of many thousand years.
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