In the 1880s, D.C.’s doctors argued about malaria and its cause
As a Nov. 9, 1881, story in The Washington Post put it: “Washington has a scapegoat upon whose back is placed the burden of all undefinable and unpreventable ills. It is called malaria.”
And so some physicians began pushing back. The Medical Association of the District adopted a resolution to poll its members and ask them about malaria. “It is apparent that this view of the unhealthfulness of our city is gaining ground abroad and that great injury is thereby done to its material prosperity,” said the resolution.It was true that Washington had a bad reputation, malarially speaking.
Newspapers were full of ads for anti-malarial patent medicines. The maker of Hostetter’s Bitters crowed that its product was popular in the tropics, “where the torrid heat exhales from dank, decaying vegetation the air-poison from which produced the worst forms of fever and ague and bilious remittent.”In December 1881, The Post published a lengthy letter from a local doctor named.
Reading the 1880s coverage of malaria makes you want to hop in a time machine, grab a doctor by the lapels of his white coat and scream, “It’s the mosquitoes, you idiots!”
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