Histopathologic Changes in Cerebral Malaria and Their Relation to Psychotic Sequels

WORLD War II has again conferred outstanding importance on the problem of malaria. This illness, which more than any other was responsible for casualties in World War I, has played a tremendous role in the second conflict as well (Wales 1 ). The neuropsychiatric complications of malaria are more common than are generally known and have been recognized since ancient times. Malarial psychoses were known even to Hippocrates and Galen. Chavigny, 2 Porot and Gutmann, 3 Hesnard 4 and others made extensive studies of the malarial psychoses and proposed various classifications of them. Pasmanik, 5 who studied more than 5,000 cases of malaria, noted mental disorders in 2 per cent of them. Forrester, 6 who studied this problem during the first world war, stated that malaria was the main cause of insanity among the Macedonian troops. In a monograph published in 1927, Anderson 7 dealt in detail with malarial psychoses and