Perspectives in medicine: malaria.

The occurrence of malaria is traceable to the remotest antiquity as judged by the references to the seasonal occurrence of intermittent fevers in ancient Egypt, India and China. Hippocrates, the Greek physician in the fifth century before Christ studied the clinical picture of malaria, recognising the different types of periodic fever. Little progress was made concerning the disease until 1640 when cinchona was introduced into Europe from Peru. It was specific for malaria and enabled the physicians to separate it from other fevers with which it had been confused.