“YE SHUL hav a fevere tertaine,” a line from Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_, is probably a reference to malaria, which was rife in swampy areas of medieval England. (“Tertaine” refers to the fever’s tendency to recur every three days, a hallmark of the variety known as _Plasmodium vivax._) The parasite was once endemic throughout Europe, not just in southern countries like Greece but as far north as Finland. In Italy in the late 19th century it used to kill 15,000 people each year. But by the end of the last century public-health programmes had rid the continent of the disease. Today, even in Africa and Asia, the war on malaria is going well: between 2000 and 2015, the World Health Organisation reported a 37% drop in the global incidence rate, and a 60% fall in the death toll. One might thus think that in Switzerland, of all places, doctors would have little need for anti-malarial treatments. Yet data from the Swiss public...
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