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by Mary Garvin
<cont. ...> The French word "ague," meaning "sharp," described the alternating chills and sweating associated with malaria. The violent body tremors that were reported to shake entire cabins were cyclic and predictable. One pioneer account of life with the shakes reads: "The justice arranged the docket to avoid the sick day of the litigant; the minister made his appointments in keeping with the shakes; the housewife hurried through her morning chores, then sat down to await her visitor. Neither a wedding in the family, nor a birth or death would stop the shakes" (6).
Although the recurrence of fever and shaking must have seemed of demonic origin for the victim, we now know that the predictable timing of the "shakes" reaction was due to the body’s immune response to the periodic maturation and subsequent rupturing of parasites out of the red blood cells. Although quinine, a plant extract, was used in Europe and the East to help relieve these symptoms, it was rarely available on the Ohio frontier, partially due to expense. In the mid 1800s, an ounce of quinine was approximately equal in value to a head of cattle (7).
However, the fever was often debilitating and accommodating the shakes wasn’t always an option. Malaria disabled entire families as described in this account of Michigan frontier life: "The malarial gases set free, that country became very sickly…crops went back into the ground, animals suffered for food, and if the people had not been too sick to need much to eat, they too must have gone hungry. The pale, sallow, bloated faces of that period were the rule; there were no healthy faces except of persons just arrived" (8).
Warnings of unhealthiness (like the catchy, "Don’t go to Michigan, that land of ills: The word means ague, fever and chills") began to discourage potential settlers in Michigan, where accounts of malaria epidemics affecting entire villages were published as late as 1839 (10). Similarly, reports of illness and mortality in Ohio were reported throughout the country and overseas. During the early 1800s, James Kilbourne, a prominent Ohio journalist and legislator wrote:
"Respecting the healthfulness of this country, I have to repeat that it is in fact sickly in a considerable degree…Almost all were sick, both in towns and country, so that it became difficult, in many instances, to get tenders for the sick. In many instances, whole families were down at a time and many died..." (11). In September of 1823, more than one-half of the 165,000 people in the Columbus area were sick from malaria, prompting pleas for the removal of the state capital from Columbus east of Zanesville (12).
Fearing that such reports might frighten away new settlers, local newspapers were reluctant to call attention to local epidemics. The Cleveland Herald reported on August 17, 1827, that "the most exaggerated reports, we understand, are in circulation abroad regarding the health of this place. The sickness is fast diminishing, and we apprehend no danger to ourselves nor to strangers who may visit us." Later that year in a letter to the editor, two Cleveland-area residents wrote: "As many reports have been circulating respecting the sickness in this village the present season, unfavorable impressions have been made which may discourage many from settling among us..." (13). While admitting to the high incidence of malaria, newspapers encouraged future settlers by reporting the low numbers of malaria-related mortalities. Although most people who contracted malaria survived, the infection typically reduced their productivity and increased their predisposition to other infectious agents.
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Kilbourne, noting that Native Americans were equally vulnerable to the fever, reported that their only means of escaping infection was to move from their homes in the low-lying areas into the uplands during the "sickly season" (14). Although the absence of gases made the upland ridges appear more healthful, why these sandy ridges provided refuge from the fever remained a mystery until its transmission by the Anophelene mosquitoes (species of mosquitoes in the genus Anopheles) was confirmed in 1897 by Surgeon-Major Ronald Ross of the Indian Medical Service. While mosquitoes were generally as much of a nuisance on the ridges as off, the specific breeding habitat requirements and sight distance of Anophelenes restricted their distribution to the low-lying swampy areas. A common Anophelene species in Ohio, Anopheles quadrimaculatus, the common malaria mosquito, is abundant in the deep shaded woods where heavy clay soils between the sandy ridges hold water well and create prime breeding conditions. The female mosquito seeks a pool of water in which to deposit her eggs, which then hatch and develop into aquatic larvae. The larvae develop into aquatic pupae from which the adults emerge. Adults seeking a blood meal typically fly an average of one mile from the swamp or pool of water from which they emerged (15). Not surprisingly, the seasonal occurrence of malaria was also associated with periods of peak mosquito abundance. The numbers of Anopheles quadrimaculatus increased in the late summer because larval development occurred quickly during the intense heat of the Ohio summer months, and widespread epidemics occurred in years when heavy rainfall and heat created optimal breeding conditions. One pioneer wrote: "Hot weather with copious showers of rain in the last of July brought us face to face with...various forms of fever, all born of and nourished by miasma..." (16). Anopheles quadrimaculatus were less likely to transmit malaria on the well-drained sandy ridges where there were fewer breeding habitats and shady retreats where they could rest during the daylight hours than in the low-lying areas.
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