MALARIA:

Cause : Malaria is an Italian word meaning bad air or poisonous gas. When the rays of the sun create gas from decomposed plants and damp earth, the malaria microbe plasmodium gets its birth and is carried by the anopheles mosquito to the human body. In Ayurveda this fever is included in the chapter on intermittent or chronic fever. Nowadays bacteriologists distinguish fevers as separate according to the different bacilli that they have seen in the blood, stools, and sputum. Ayurveda maintains that these bacilli are not the main causes of the disease. Rather, they say, it is the unbalanced and unbalancing condition of the tridosh (air, bile, and phlegm) that is the underlying cause, and that bacilli are only instrumental factors taking advantage of the underlying condition to attack the organism. In this connection Dr. Rogers once made an interesting experiment. He ate some cholera bacilli when in sound health and was not attacked with the disease. Again, after making the bile weak by taking only soda, he ate the bacilli, and was attacked.

Symptoms: Quotidian intermittent fever comes once every 24 hrs., tertian fever comes every alternate day, quartan fever comes every two days, double quotidian comes twice in one day. Where bile is the cause, there is one day of high temperature and one of low. Some types of intermittent fever come back regularly at the same time of day; others are irregular. The daily recurring fevers are called quotidian in Ayurvedic Medicine. They have three stages: cold, hot, and perspiring.  In the cold stage the patient shivers, and sometimes so severely that three and four quilts cannot stop the shivering. In this stage the body aches, the head throbs with pain, there is thirst and whooping cough (sometimes). In the hot stage the patient generally has headache, red face, dry skin, thirst, burning sensation, and breathing difficulty. After some hours perspiration begins, and there is remission.

Treatment: Sarbajwara Bati and Sadhana Pachan are the best medicines for malaria. They kill the microbes of any kind of malaria. Another good medicine is Brihat Sarbajwar Hara Lauha (Sattar Bhabna). Those who have suffered long from malaria become anæmic. Their blood becomes impure, and they take on a pale and gloomy hue. For them Saribadi Salsa, Lauhasab, and Amritarista are prescribed.

Diet:  During fever sago, barley, arrowroot, and all such light foods are to be given. When the fever is gone, give fresh fish soup, vegetable curry, and boiled rice (old stock); at evening milk with sago or milk with wheat bread or vegetables with wheat bread may be given. Things not allowed are bathing in cold water, hard labor, daytime napping, remaining in the sun, and sexual intercourse. The malaria patient should not walk mornings and evenings on an empty stomach, and he should use a mosquito net at night.  The malaria patient usually becomes impatient after suffering repeated attacks. Then he becomes careless, eats at random, and refuses to go the doctor. He takes patent medicines, enlarging the spleen and liver. By and by the disease becomes incurable. Be warned in time and see that your patient gets a good doctor and good medicines.