A Malaria Prescription

Doctors used to prescribe malaria to treat syphilis. After observing that a high fever cured some patients of disease, doctors began to therapeutically inoculate patients with malaria parasites (known to cause high fever). Julius Wagner-Jauregg won the 1927 Nobel Prize in Medicine for demonstrating success in the treatment of dementia paralytica (caused by neurosyphilis) through inducing fever with malaria parasites. Unfortunately for patients, the mortality rate of malariotherapy was as high as 15%.