Counseling Sheet

Agatha M. Thrash, M.D.
Preventive Medicine

Malaria is caused by Plasmodium, a parasite introduced into the bloodstream by a bite from an infected female Anopheles mosquito, the one that stands on her head to bite. The parasite enters a red blood cell and multiplies until it forms a whole rosette of new parasites, and bursts the cell. At the time a crop of red cells begin to burst, the patient starts having chills and the fever rises. There is usually backache, muscle soreness, and extreme malaise. When the red cells rupture, all the new malaria parasites are set free in the bloodstream, and each one immediately searches for a new red cell to inhabit. The patient continues to have a fever while the parasites are free in the plasma. Even a small number of parasites free in the blood are capable of provoking a high fever with shaking chills. Any successful attack on malaria has to be made during this parasite migration phase. In falciparum malaria there may also be blood in the urine which gives this most serious form of malaria the name of "blackwater fever."

Prevention depends on control of the anopheles mosquito. Swamps must be cleaned out, breeding places eliminated, and water not allowed to accumulate in tin cans, old tires, ditches, etc. These mosquitos are usually more active beginning about one hour before sunset. A heavy application of citronella insect repellant, and protective clothing, mosquito screens over the bed at night, and screening of windows to banish the anopheles mosquitoes from the home, are effective preventive measures.‍

The following suggestions were made by an Australian man who told me the method he was using to treat malaria.

Diet: Become a total vegetarian - no meat, milk, eggs, or cheese.

‍Papaya seeds: Take 12 seeds, crack outer shell, quickly swallow all of them. They are very bitter. Take 12 seeds every second day thereafter. Active ingredient has a quinine effect. Malaria symptoms will disappear in the long-time vegan within half an hour to an hour after taking the papaya seed: longer in those on a mixed diet.

‍Onion: Eat a large onion, lightly steamed (just enough to cause beginning transparent appearance and to abolish most of the hot sensation in the mouth).‍

Garlic: Eat one whole globe (10 to 15 cloves) of garlic baked in an already hot oven at 250° F. for 10 minutes, or just enough to lose most of the hot sensation and begin appearing transparent. The garlic may be steamed for a few minutes instead of baking if preferred.‍

Water: Drink lots of water - around 12 glasses per day.‍

Lemons: Use small-bush lemons (thin skin). Daily squeeze the juice of 10 lemons onto food or into water and drink as lemonade.Use a totally vegetarian diet. Start with one lemon on the first day of the treatment session. Drink the juice in the morning with water. Eat fresh pineapple every day if at all possible. Build up the dosage of lemons by one lemon per day until 9 lemons are being taken with water during the day. Then decrease the dosage by 1 lemon per day until an entire treatment period of 18 days will be finished. A nurse who returned from India takes 12 lemons a day when she knows she is having a malaria attack.

Others have raised the temperature by a hot treatment of some kind (tub bath, blanket pack, etc.) three to four hours before the fever was anticipated. These treatments have worked quite well.

Diets increased in Omega-3 fatty acids and low in vitamin E are favorable against malaria. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in walnuts, flaxseed, and many nuts and seeds. Vitamin E is found in wheat, wheat germ, wheat germ oil, other cereal grains, green plants, egg yolk, milk fat, butter, meat (especially liver), nuts, vegetable oils (soybean, corn, cotton seed). Medical Tribune 34(13):3; 7-8-93.‍

Hydrotherapy:

An excellent treatment begins immediately with the onset of fever, or one-half to two hours before if the fever onset is predictable, with a hot water enema followed by two quick very hot fomentations of three minutes each to the low chest and abdomen. A warm fomentation should be laid in the bed for the patient to lie upon. As the second of these two fomentations is being applied, begin a cold mitten friction to the rest of the body, starting with the upper extremities, proceeding to the lower extremities. Terminate the second fomentation with a cold mitten friction to the abdomen and chest. Finish the cold mitten friction to the extremities if not already completed. Then turn the patient and end the treatment with a cold mitten friction to the back. Follow this phase of treatment with a rest of 1 to 1.5 hours.

The next portion of the treatment is alternating hot and cold fomentations, two quick ones to the spine, very hot, and about three minutes each, with one minute cold compresses following each three minute hot fomentation. When the fomentations to the spine have been completed, give a hot foot bath with alternating hot and cold spray to the liver and spleen area. The patient may stand in the hot foot bath in the shower while the hot and cold spray is being administered to the midsection. Give the hot spray at about 110° and the cold spray at about 40 to 50°. Continue the treatment for 10 to 20 minutes. The patient should be quite warm during this part of the treatment.

The second phase of the treatment ends with a vigorous cold mitten friction for five minutes while sitting in a bathtub, the water at about 70 to 80°. One may substitute a cold mitten friction in bed for a debilitated patient, or a salt glow followed by a cool cleansing shower at about 90 to 94°. At the end of the second phase the patient should rest in bed to react for one to one and a half hours.

‍Another method of treatment for malaria consists of taking the temperature every 15 minutes: at the first sign of an elevation of body temperature, put the patient into a full body pack, a Russian steam bath, a whirlpool, or a hot bathtub, to elevate the mouth temperature to about 102 to 103°, bringing out the army of white blood cells into the bloodstream to attack the parasites before they can enter new red blood cells. You probably will not catch them all the first treatment, but persevere. Be ready with a full body pack every time the symptoms appear, whether it is every 3 days, 4 days, or at irregular intervals. Used with persistence and proper timing, this treatment will completely eradicate the disease.The malaria drugs depress the white cells both in the bone marrow and in the blood. You are dependent, however, in the rational treatment of malaria on the phagocytic activity of the white blood cells to eradicate the parasites.‍

Another malaria remedy came from Mr. & Mrs. Font-Piquer, Christian missionaries to Africa, around March, 1993. ''With my husband, since we are at Riverside, we have given natural remedies to people attacked by malaria. Generally, the patient has already been given Chloroquine by local doctors, but the parasites are becoming resistant to it more and more often. So, as a last resort, people come to us when they are in bad shape. We have applied the treatment that you give in HOME REMEDIES and have seen wonders in five days. As the water from the river is not clean (parasites, cholera, bilharzia) we have boiled it or just put charcoal powder in it and have administered enemas, fomentations, papaya leaf or peach leaf tea, charcoal drinks, and have required the people to fast during the time they have the fever. Generally they vomit what they eat during the fever, anyway. We have given a lot of citrus fruit juice as well. We have been very impressed to see the results with the help of God and the good will of the people."

‍Dr. H.F. Rand, Superintendent of St. Helena Sanitarium in Washington state, tells of his experience:...We gave malaria patients a cool half-bath about 10 hours before the chill was due, following this with other cold treatments at intervals. The men from the medical school were there to watch the results. They watched for the chill to come, but it did not come. We used other cool treatments and kept them up. Together we treated these cases for a week. All that was required in the treatment was hydrotherapy, and it was successful from the beginning.

There was another case that they had been treating in their way for nearly two weeks. The man had been taking quinine and other medicines. The doctors told him it would probably be three to four months before he would be well. They knew that the malarial parasites could resist their medicines, and live in spite of them. This case was more reduced than the others had been. We used cold mitten friction, beginning about the same number of hours before the chill was expected each time, and the chills kept coming further and further apart until finally they ceased in about a week.

Just recently, in California, we have had two gentlemen suffering from this disease who had taken large quantities of quinine. As soon as they came we began giving the cold mitten friction every two hours, with hot and cold to the spine to tone up the nervous system. We were careful with the diet in order to keep the alimentary tract in as normal a condition as possible; and in tow or three days the chills were completely obliterated, and the patients improved very fast. We used no quinine at all. The examination of the blood in one week showed no trace of the plasmodia. LIFE AND HEALTH, August 1909.‍

Dr. Paulson wrote about his experience in the General Conference Bulletin, 1907 as follows:

"Naturally quinine was considered just as indispensable in malaria as morphine was following certain surgical operations. We soon had an abundant opportunity to put our principles in regard to quinine to a practical test. It happened to be a malarial summer in Michigan. During the summer something like 50 cases came to us in all ages and in all stages of the disease. Dr. Kress and I, who could not consistently reconcile the prevailing routine quinine program with some of the truths we had studied, determined we would discover for ourselves what God would help us to do in malarial cases without quinine. It was mutually agreed that as the patients came in, one was to be assigned to this physician, the next one to Dr. Kress and myself, so alternating. As he was also a microscopic expert, having taken special training in blood work, every case, not only his own, but ours, was carefully checked up by himself by laboratory work, so there was no chance for guess work.

"We carefully took the temperature every 15 minutes. As soon as there began to be the least rise of temperature, that was a notification to us that the chill was approaching. We at once put the patient into a hot blanket pack, which brought on profound perspiration and thereby if we had hit it right, we would invariably prevent the chill. The patient would perspire for a time, we would take them out carefully, provided it was the alternate day variety, we gave tonic treatments (hot and cold). The following day we again instituted the temperature taking program. We invariably found that the rise of temperature was much delayed, showing that we were gaining the ascendancy. We would then go through the same program. Frequently we did not have to do this the third time; the work had been done, and in a week or ten days the patient was fully restored to health. Sometimes we would miss hitting it just right for several days, so there would be a delay."

‍Comparison of the two methods:

‍The blanket pack patients, not one case with serious complications, or treatment failure.

The quinine patients fared not so well. Some developed deafness which was irreparable; there was some reversible impaired mentality; and others with numerous minor complications.

"One day an old feeble broken down man came in so loaded with malaria that it seemed he was on the brink of the grave. According to the rotation he belonged to the quinine list. The doctor, after sizing up the situation, said he did not dare to undertake his case, so he was turned over to our list. I will never forget when Dr. Kress and I earnestly told the Lord that His principles were on test, and pleaded with Him to vindicate what he had said. We then took hold of the case. Within a week, the man was restored to health." PRAISE THE LORD.