Malaria parasite (Plasmodium)
Plasmodium, parásito de la malaria
- Date
- 1880 · confidence high
- Place
- Military hospital of Constantine, Algeria
- Credited to
- Alphonse Laveran
- People
- 👤 Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran1845–1922
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
He observed motile protozoan parasites in the blood of soldiers, the first protozoan identified as the cause of a human disease. It refuted the idea that malaria was bacterial or miasmatic.
Nobel Prize 1907.
What it led to
- medical parasitology
- discovery of the mosquito vector (Ross, Grassi)
- malaria control programmes
- antimalarials (chloroquine, artemisinin)
Built on
- Compound microscopec. 1590-1625
- microscopy
- quinine