History of malaria and brain which are the most constant post-mortem indications of chronic malaria infection. He related the prevalence of malaria in swampy areas to the presence of flies and recommended swamp drainage to prevent it. In the nineteenth century, the first drugs were developed to treat malaria and parasites were first identified as its source. French chemist Pierre Joseph Pelletier and French pharmacist Joseph Bienaimé Caventou separated in 1820 the alkaloids cinchonine and quinine from powdered fever tree bark, allowing for the creation of standardized doses of the active ingredients. Prior to 1820, the bark was simply dried, ground to a
Malaria common suggest high levels of over diagnosis due to insufficient or inaccurate laboratory testing. Malaria is usually confirmed by the microscopic examination of blood films or by antigen-based rapid diagnostic tests (RDT). In some areas, RDTs need to be able to distinguish whether the malaria symptoms are caused by "Plasmodium falciparum" or by other species of parasites since treatment strategies could differ for non-"P. falciparum" infections. Microscopy is the most commonly used method to detect the malarial parasite—about 165 million blood films were examined for malaria in 2010. Despite its widespread usage, diagnosis by microscopy suffers from two main drawbacks: