Marsh fever

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Anopheles mosquito sucks blood

The march fever ( march disease, march disease, crop disease, intermittent fever, stubble fever, Drüddendagsfeber or three days fever, roseola resp. Three-day fever, sometimes also wrongly: Crohn Ditmarsicus, Dithmarschen disease, Dithmarsische disease etc. pp.) Is the German name for Malaria tertiana , a form of malaria that also occurred in Germany. The disease was mainly transmitted by malaria mosquitoes of the species Anopheles atroparvus , which was widespread in the marshes of northern Germany. These marshes have now been largely drained.

history

In the past, malaria was also widespread in countries with a moderate climate , including Germany. Up until the end of the Middle Ages, reports of epidemics were so imprecise that it was difficult to distinguish malaria from other diseases with a febrile course. What is certain is that large parts of Europe suffered from a malaria epidemic in 1557/58. There were numerous such epidemics up until the 18th century. Large parts of Germany were affected, but above all the marshes and moors on the coast and the areas along the large rivers. During an epidemic in 1826, every second child in East Frisia is said to have developed marsh fever. Aemil Storm (1833-1897), Theodor Storm's youngest brother, wrote a twenty-page paper on the disease.

In the period that followed, river straightening and bog colonization destroyed numerous breeding grounds for mosquitoes. The area on the North Sea coast of Germany, which is partly below sea level, was processed with a great deal of technical effort. The purpose of the reclamation and the drying of the bog was to preserve more arable and pasture land and to improve the yield of the marshland through reliable drainage . In the developing cultural landscape, Anopheles maculipennis typicus replaced the fever-transmitting Anopheles maculipennis messeae . At the same time, the living situation of the population improved, so that people were stung less often. In contrast, drugs or the use of insecticides were of little importance in reducing the incidence of intermittent fever in Germany.

By the end of the 19th century, the change or marsh fever had almost disappeared from Germany, only around Emden and Aurich in East Friesland as well as around Breslau , Oppeln and the district of Pleß in Silesia were endemic foci remained.

After both world wars, the disease flared up again briefly when many people had to live in emergency shelters under difficult hygienic conditions. In 1918 there was an epidemic in Emden with around 4,000 cases. Even after the Second World War the intermittent fever reappeared in Germany. It was favored by the warm and humid summers of 1945 and 1946 and the numerous mosquito breeding grounds in the destroyed cities. In Berlin, 651 cases were counted by the end of 1947, in Hamburg 88.

Pathogen

The intermittent fever indigenous to Germany was in the vast majority of cases from malaria tertiana . The transmission of malaria quartana and malaria tropica can, in principle, also occur through native mosquitoes, but it is less likely.

The development time of the pathogen in the mosquito is strongly dependent on the temperature; it takes longer in temperate latitudes than in the tropics. Fever epidemics therefore mainly occurred in hot summers, while cold summers could bring them to a standstill. At 20 ° C, Plasmodium vivax , the causative agent of tertiary malaria, only needs 17 days to develop. The pathogens causing tropical malaria need 23 days at the same temperature, and the pathogens causing quartana malaria even 35 days.

Pl. Vivax and Pl. Ovale , the triggers of malaria tertiana , in contrast to other plasmodia, can survive as hypnozoites in the liver of an infected person. The disease often does not break out after a short incubation period of 8 to 16 days, but only after a "primary long latency" of several months. In this way, the pathogens could survive the "mosquito-free" winter months. Viewed over the course of the year, the incidence of intermittent fever occurred primarily in spring and late summer. In spring, many people were weakened due to the season, which caused the latent intermittent fever to break out. In late summer, there were more cases in which the disease followed a new infection with a short incubation.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Heinrich August Pierer (ed.): Pierer's Universal Lexikon . 4th, revised and greatly increased edition. tape 5 . Publishing bookstore by H. A. Pierer, Altenburg 1858, p. 196 ( zeno.org ).
  2. Raphael Herder and Benjamin Herder (eds.): Herders Conversations-Lexikon . 1st edition. tape 2 . Herder'sche Verlagshandlung, Freiburg im Breisgau 1854, p. 409-410 ( zeno.org ).
  3. a b c d e f g Margot Kathrin Dalitz: Autochthonous malaria in Central Germany . Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg 2005 ( sundoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de - dissertation).
  4. Aemil Storm (Aemilius Storm): De febre sic dicta marchica . 1st edition. Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (university bookstore ), C. F. Mohr, Kiel 1857 ( daten.digitale-sammlungen.de - Latin: De febre sic dicta marchica . Dissertation).