A brief history of malaria chemotherapy

Malaria is one of the worst sicknesses to affect humankind. For centuries there was no specific treatment, and it was not until the seventeenth century that Spanish colonisers brought back from Peru tree bark from which quinine was later extracted. In the twentieth century, synthetic alternatives to quinine were developed. Of these, chloroquine was the most successful, but by the 1970s widespread resistance had developed and the world was left without an effective treatment for malaria.

A brief history of malaria chemotherapy

Malaria is one of the worst sicknesses to affect humankind. For centuries there was no specific treatment, and it was not until the seventeenth century that Spanish colonisers brought back from Peru tree bark from which quinine was later extracted. In the twentieth century, synthetic alternatives to quinine were developed. Of these, chloroquine was the most successful, but by the 1970s widespread resistance had developed and the world was left without an effective treatment for malaria.