Malariotherapy

At the beginning of the 20th century, doctors and medical researchers were searching for new and innovative ways to treat syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection that can cause serious health problems if left untreated. One of the most unusual treatments they developed was known as malariotherapy.

Malariotherapy involved deliberately infecting patients with malaria, a potentially deadly disease, in the hopes that the high fevers and other symptoms associated with malaria would somehow cure or alleviate the symptoms of syphilis.It actually had some limited success in treating the disease, and was used for several decades before the development of more effective treatments.