[194] Quinine is still almost exclusively the remedy used in the treatment of malaria. It is prepared from the bark of the cinchona tree. This important remedy was introduced into Europe in 1640 from Ecuador by Juan del Vego, physician of the Countess del Cinchon. That intermittent fever was an infectious disease, although not one which was transmitted direct from man to man, had been assumed for a long time. Therefore it was natural, at a time when bacteriology was triumphing, to look for a living agent causing infection in malaria, which search was, seemingly, successful (Klebs, Tomasi-Crudeli, 1879). Hence it was not surprising that the discovery of the real malarial parasites in November, 1880, by the military doctor A. Laveran[195] in Constantine (Algeria), at first met with violent opposition, even after Richard (1882) had confirmed it and Marchiafava, Celli, Grassi and others, had further extended it. Not that the existence of structures found in the blood of malaria patients by Laveran and Richard was denied; on the contrary, the investigations of the opponents furnished many valuable discoveries, but the organisms were differently interpreted and considered to be degeneration products of red blood corpuscles. Only when Marchiafava and Celli (1885) saw movements in the parasites, which Laveran called _Oscillaria malariæ_ and later _Hæmatozoön malariæ_, was their animal nature admitted and the parasites were named _Plasmodium malariæ_. Shortly before this, Gerhardt (1884) had stated that the disease could be transmitted by the injection of the blood of a malarial patient to a healthy person. [195] The discovery of Laveran is in no way lessened by the fact that one investigator or another (according to Blanchard [_Arch. de Paras._, vii, 1903, p. 152], P. F. H. Klencke in 1843) had seen, mentioned and depicted malarial parasites. (_Neue phys. Abhandl. auf. selbständ. Beob. gegr._, Leipzig, 1843, p. 163, fig. 25). In 1847 Meckel had recognized that the dark colour of the organs in persons dead of malaria was due to pigment. Virchow in 1848 stated that this pigment occurred in blood cells. Kelsch in 1875 recognized the frequency of melaniferous leucocytes in the blood of malarial patients. Beauperthuy (1853) noticed that in Guadeloupe there was no malaria at altitudes where there were no “insectes tipulaires,” and suggested that the disease was inoculated by insects.