Between the date of the Countess's recovery in Lima and the year 1880 a colossal literature on the disease had accumulated.
Literally thousands of workers had studied the various aspects of its many problems; the literature of this country, particularly of the Southern States, in the first half of the last century may be said to be predominantly malarial.

Ordinary observation carried on for long centuries had done as much as was possible.

In 1880, a young French army surgeon, Laveran by name, working in Algiers, found in the microscopic examination of the blood that there were little bodies in the red blood corpuscles, amoeboid in character, which he believed to be the germs of the disease.

Very little attention at first was paid to his work, and it is not surprising.

It was the old story of "Wolf, wolf"; there had been so many supposed "germs" that the profession had become suspicious.
Several years elapsed before Surgeon-General Sternberg called the attention of the English-speaking world to Laveran's work: it was taken up actively in Italy, and in America by Councilman, Abbott and by others among us in Baltimore.