"Cinchona revolutionized the art of medicine as profoundly as gunpowder had the art of war." - Bernardino Ramazzini, Physician to the Duke of Modena, Opera omnia, medica, et physica, 1716 In the summer of 1623, ten cardinals and hundreds of their attendants died in Rome while electing a new pope. The Roman marsh fever that felled them was the scourge of the Mediterranean,
northern Europe and even America. Malaria, now known as a disease of the tropics, badly weakened the Roman Empire. It killed thousands of British troops fighting Napoleon in 1809 and many soldiers on both sides of the
American Civil War. It turned back travelers exploring West Africa in the nineteenth century and brought…
The most devastating disease to humans has undoubtedly been malaria. Fiammetta Rocco is qualified to write about the disease. She has had it herself, and her father had it many times. Her grandparents… This engaging account sketches the investigation and
quest for a cure for the "mal 'aria" of Rome. "Mal 'aria" was once thought to emanate from the "bad air" of swamps and marshes. Rocco, herself a…
