Hey, cypher here with another episode of Engaging Etymology.
This time we’re going to see where the word malaria, comes from.
So malaria is common tropical disease that causes nasty symptoms like nausea, fever,
and diarrhea.
If left untreated it may lead to severe symptoms like seizures followed by a comatose state
and death.
It still kills thousands of people around the world every year.
The disease has been the cause of many problems throughout world history, and its treatment
and prevention has been a particularly powerful force in medicine.
We know now that it is mostly transmitted by infected mosquitoes, whom infect people
with their bites.
But that was not always the case.
You see, there have been many causes theorized throughout history.
Everything from imbalance of the essential humors (an ancient idea of balancing types
essential goo in the human body), to venereal disease.
One incorrect theory held the most sway for a long time, and its overturning was essential
to the progress of medical understanding.
The theory of miasma said that there was a kind of air that floating in particular regions
that was noxious, which was called miasma.
This miasma was often portrayed as some kind of ethereal vapor that floated over the tropics
and swamp land.
So for the longest time, it miasmatic diseases such as malaria were thought to be prevented
by infusing the air with good smells from fragrant herbs and burning incense.
You might have seen those strange crow masks that doctors would wear during the plague
of the black death, back in the middle ages.
These scary looking masks were not designed to be horrifying or disruptive.
Their shape serves a function.
The beak would hold that incense and herbs that supposedly defeated miasma.
That may be a laughable theory in hindsight, but it was fairly reasonable without the knowledge
of bacteria, or in malaria’s case protozoa, and their how they may cause disease.
That idea was not capable of defeating the theory of miasma until 1736, when physician
by the name of Evert Valk theorized that the recently discovered animalcule (aka bacteria)
might be the cause of a disease spreading in the Netherlands.
This was really wacky stuff at that point in time.
It took a while before people like Louis Pasteur really showed ideas of biotics were true through
scientific investigation in the late 19th century.
Until then the theory of miasma held as established truth, since the idea of micro-organisms causing
epidemic diseases would be fairly preposterous to anyone without some sort of proof.
Be mindful of calling such widely accepted theories, such as miasma, foolish because
you may very well hold such supposedly foolish theories close at heart without ever knowing
it.
Just look at how dark matter and dark energy has completely usurped our understanding of
the material universe.
While interesting methods were created to fight malaria, such as tonic water.
It used to contain a lot of a molecule called quinine that functions as a prophylactic against
malarial infection.
It was so effective that the World Health Organization recommended it as a first line
of defense against malaria, all the way until 2006.
Quinine was first used in 1631 to prevent malaria, and became so effective that tonic
water became a standard dietary measure for colonists in tropical areas.
The drink was bitter, so people mixed it with gin to make it go down more easily in the
mid-19th century.
That’s where we get the gin and tonic cocktail.
Tonic was effective against malaria, but obviously given the date of 1631 being prior to the
discover of the animalcule in the early 18th century, it was quite impossible to think
that this was stopping a protozoan infection.
Instead people thought it was the tonic balanced exposure to the bad air caused by miasma.
And that is where we derive the word malaria.
It comes from italian for bad air, or malo (meaning bad) and aria (meaning air).
It comes from a now defunct theory of miasma.
So I hoped you liked the episode, and be sure to subscribe for more.
Be sure to check out my previous episodes if you haven’t seen them already.