Opinion Older than Tutankhamen

Malaria courses relentlessly through narratives of history and literature. It blighted the greatness that was Rome,though it may have saved the city from a sacking by Attila the Hun,who may have turned back out of fear of the fever raging there. Archaeologists digging in cemeteries near former marshes around Rome have uncovered evidence of widespread outbreaks of the disease in the empire’s waning years.

Indeed,the pestilence is so closely linked to Roman history that the word “malaria” comes from the Italian for “bad air.” The “vapours” persisted almost to the present,as Henry James knew in writing his novella Daisy Miller. When the guileless young American took her fateful stroll by moonlight in the Colosseum,she ignored warnings and died a few days later of “a terrible case of the fever.”

The sun never set on malaria death at British colonial outstations. If there is anything to the mummy’s curse,it may be delivered by mosquitoes. Every mile and each lock in the Panama Canal came at the expense of life to yellow fever and malaria. Marines,soldiers and Seabees returned from Pacific jungles victorious but weak with fever.

Although malaria has been largely eradicated in wealthier nations,and is easily treatable with medicines,there was a time when half of the United States was in danger. In the 19th century,“Potomac fever” was no metaphor. Europeans gave their diplomats hardship pay to induce them to serve in vaporous Washington.

Diplomats still get hardship pay in places where malaria remains endemic — where people are too poor to feed themselves,much less treat the fevers killing them.