Similarities
There are quite a few similarities between how people treated malaria and the Black Death is the middle ages. This is because people had the same amount of knowledge about diseases, and this wasn’t very much. Most of the treatments for both diseases, and anything else that made them ill, involved superstition and home remedies. Bleeding was used for both diseases because they believed that the blood would carry out the toxins and rid the body of what was making them ill. This actually made the Malaria more deadly and it made the anaemia worse. People tried to keep the streets clean and make sure that no one touched the infected, and this was probably the most effective treatment for both diseases. Witchcraft was the most common treatment as many believed in the supernatural. Limbs that showed signs of infection were often amputated and many victims changed their diets in hope of curing themselves. Natural remedies were used and an example of this is shell powder which was made up of grounded bird shells.
Differences
Because it is easier to protect yourself against Malaria, the treatment is more about preventative measures then medical treatment. The current treatment for malaria
is artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). ACTs are effective and are well-tolerated by
patients, but because of their high cost, patients often purchase cheaper,
less-effective drugs, poor-quality drugs, or counterfeits, all of which can
increase the risk that drug-resistant strains of malaria will emerge.
Resistance has already been observed in Southeast Asia. Bed nets, protective clothing and pesticide are very common because they are cheap and people in third world countries can afford them. However purging was also used to try and cleanse the body of Malaria. Vinegar treatments were used on people suffering the Black Death and the lancing of buboes was a painful attempt to rid people of the awful disease.
cOMPARISON
Because many of the beliefs around home remedies and witch craft were the same, many of the treatments that people used to treat the Black Death and Malaria were very similar. These days the most effective treatment for Malaria is stopping yourself from getting bitten by the anopheles mosquito in the first place. There is a vaccine for the Black Death so that is a major difference between the treatments of both diseases. Because people with the Black Death show more visible signs of the disease, the treatments they used were more to do with popping buboes and bloodletting, whereas Malaria victims do not show the disease so the treatments for that are more to do with getting body temperatures down and vomiting to try to expel the toxins.