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# Origin of the word malaria and Charles Laveran's discovery of its parasite
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/maliariia-malaria-s-italianskogo-plokhoi-vozdukh/
- Published: 2020-04-29T12:15:13.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:00:37.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Observations, Science

Malaria (mal'aria) is Italian for "bad air", as opposed to buon'aria, good air. The disease was originally thought to arise from foul miasmas in the atmosphere, so the quality of the air was the key to defining it. The malarial plasmodium, which in fact causes the illness, was discovered by the army doctor Charles Laveran in Algeria, and much later, in 1907, he received the Nobel Prize for the discovery.