7. Doctors Gave Mental Patients Malaria On Purpose
Given the correlation between syphilis and the development of mental health symptoms, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of those committed around the turn of the 20th century were infected with syphilis. What is surprising is how the asylums of the era decided to treat it. Dr. Julius Wagner-Jauregg was the first to advocate for using malaria as a syphilis treatment. In the age before antibiotics, no reliable cure had been found for the devastating disease. Dr. Wagner-Jauregg began experimenting with injecting malaria in the bloodstream of patients with syphilis (likely without their knowledge or consent) in the belief that the malarial parasites would kill the agent of syphilis infection.
Doctors began using Wagner-Jauregg’s protocol, injecting countless asylum patients with malaria, again, likely without their knowledge or consent. Wagner-Jauregg’s research found that about half of the patients injected with malaria did see at least somewhat of a reduction in syphilis symptoms after the treatment. However, about 15% of those “treated” with malaria also died from the disease. One patient of the Oregon asylum reported that, during his stay, at least four out of every five patients was sick in bed with malaria.