Malaria in Italy

David Frum has been reading Frank Snowden's book about Malaria in Italy:

We're used to thinking of malaria as a disease that besets Africa and other very poor places. We're used to thinking of Italy as a First World country, which we can visit without much worse risk than a pick-pocketing.

But the word "malaria" is an Italian word, a clue to the unsettling truth that until extremely recently, Italy was a country beset by this deadly disease. The last case of malaria in Italy was closed as recently as 1962. Deep into the 1940s, malaria sickened and killed Italians by the hundreds of thousands, even millions. . . .

Snowden describes the conquest of malaria as the greatest accomplishment of the Italian state—and by the time one finishes his book, one is convinced he is right. It was an Italian doctor who first charted the life-cycle of the parasite that causes malaria, and thus first predicted the course of the disease. It was Italian doctors who proved that the parasite was carried by mosquitoes. And it was these doctors, backed by the state, who launched the world's first national malarial program. 

According to Snowden, malaria was one of the main reasons southern Italy lagged economically behind the north. Very interesting.