In 1917 Julius Wagner-Jauregg, psychiatrist and professor at the University of Graz, introduced a particular treatment to treat syphilis patients.
After observing that the terminal manifestation of the progressive paralysis due to syphilis were found very rarely in countries where malaria was more widespread, began to experience the effects of injection of "Plasmodium Vivax" (Malaria Parasite) in syphilis patients.
What emerged from his experiments is that with a fever induced at a temperature of 39.5 ºC or higher, the pathogen "treponema pallidun" responsible for syphilis was killed.
He called the treatment "malarioterapia", obviously after this therapy remained to be treated malaria that compared to syphilis was less deadly. For these studies the Austrian psychiatrist received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1927.
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