THE BOUNDS OF MALARIA – FROM ‘BAD AIR’ TO MARSHLAND MALARIA

The most outstanding epidemiological divide within south-east England was not between rural and urban communities but along the bounds of marshland and non-marshland terrain. It was here that the natural environmental or ecological features proved to be the critical determinants of the patterning of disease and death. In the area of marshland topography and ‘bad airs’, the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers had written with remarkable clarity and perception. They had sensed with their noses, they had realised through their experiences and their ill health that some unique and peculiar quality of the marsh air gave rise to frequent suffering and premature death. The belief that it was the ‘mal'aria’ of the marshes which caused the high levels of mortality and sickness was not, of course, strictly correct. It was not the ‘bad air’, per se, that contributed to marshland mortality. Rather it was an anopheline mosquito vector, capable of transmitting a parasitic disease to humans, that was the culprit in this mortal landscape. Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century men, women and children were observing, witnessing and falling victim to the true plasmodium malaria. But they were unaware of the real ecological and biological parameters of this disease.

In reconstructing the demographic and epidemiological landscapes of early modern south-east England, considerable attention has been given to the role of malaria in this setting (Chapter 6).