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Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75.1 (2001) 148



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Book Reviews

An Illustrated History of Malaria.

Charles M. Poser and George W. Bruyn. An Illustrated History of Malaria. New York: Parthenon, 1999. xiv + 165 pp. Ill. $75.00.

This brief history of malaria is, as the title promises, lavishly illustrated. Topical chapters begin with malaria in the ancient world, and then take up in turn the stories of research on the parasite and mosquito vector, chemotherapy, and disease control. Each chapter is followed by page after page of illustrations, featuring prominently the persons mentioned in the chapter, and also title pages of relevant books. The volume is heavily slanted toward the pre-1900 era. The authors, two neurologists who came to the subject of malaria via tropical neurology, appear most interested in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century priority disputes over the use of quinine, the discovery of the plasmodium, and the great Britain-Italy controversy over the mosquito vector that continues even today.

There is an ample bibliography of primary and secondary works on the history of malaria, although it too reflects the authors' neglect of the twentieth century. Absent from it are any of the slew of recent works on tropical medicine and the role of medical practice among the tools of empire. There are no footnotes, although the authors frequently offer long quotations from their sources and provide the author and title of the reference. The text is heavily derivative of older histories of malaria. Poser and Bruyn make no pretense of bringing a new interpretation to that literature, although they do claim to be more comprehensive on some subjects--such as the history of cinchona, the biology of the mosquito, and the mosquito vector priority dispute. More detail there may be, but it fails to significantly change our understanding of these topics. The authors have collected an impressive array of illustrations, but their sources are not always clear. Portraits are listed as being from libraries, for example, when it is not specified whether they come from a book in the library, or are hanging on the wall.

The authors' inattention to the twentieth century causes them to ignore the greatest controversy within malariology, at least over the last hundred years: Is malaria best controlled by attacking the mosquito vector, or by attacking the parasite? While their heavy focus on the history of quinine and their brief mention of mosquito control would suggest that they favor the medication route, they never engage this topic directly. DDT is barely mentioned, and the doomed World Health Organization campaign against malaria in the 1950s and 1960s is nowhere at all. It is of course the authors' prerogative to review the familiar nineteenth-century story while shirking the major issues of the last century, but it seems an odd choice for a work purporting to cover all of the history.

Although the bibliography is useful, this volume cannot be recommended for the novice interested in malaria's history. Gordon Harrison's Mosquitoes, Malaria, and Man: A History of the Hostilities since 1880 (1978) remains a much better starting point for the student venturing into this fascinating field of history.

Margaret Humphreys
Duke University

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