The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962

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Yale University Press, Oct 1, 2008 - Medical - 304 pages
At the outset of the twentieth century, malaria was Italy’s major public health problem. It was the cause of low productivity, poverty, and economic backwardness, while it also stunted literacy, limited political participation, and undermined the army. In this book Frank Snowden recounts how Italy became the world center for the development of malariology as a medical discipline and launched the first national campaign to eradicate the disease. Snowden traces the early advances, the setbacks of world wars and Fascist dictatorship, and the final victory against malaria after World War II. He shows how the medical and teaching professions helped educate people in their own self-defense and in the process expanded trade unionism, women’s consciousness, and civil liberties. He also discusses the antimalarial effort under Mussolini’s regime and reveals the shocking details of the German army’s intentional release of malaria among Italian civilians—the first and only known example of bioterror in twentieth-century Europe. Comprehensive and enlightening, this history offers important lessons for today’s global malaria emergency.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
The Italian National Disease
7
The Rome School of Malariology
27
3 A Nation Mobilizes
53
Hopes Illusions and Victories
87
5 The First World War and Epidemic Disease
115
6 Fascism Racism and Littoria
142
Nazism and Bioterror in the Pontine Marshes
181
DDT and Old Weapons
198
Conclusion
213
Notes
225
Glossary
269
Select Bibliography
271
Index
287
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About the author (2008)

Frank M. Snowden is professor of history at Yale University.

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