From time immemorial the physician has been inclined to prescribe, and the patient to take, quinine only so long as fever continues. Since the organization of malaria campaigns, the malariologist has been concerned over the frequency of relapse—not always distinguished from reinfection—and has tended to combine the treatment of the acute attack with the prevention of relapse. He has therefore encouraged longer and longer treatments, hoping thereby to obtain a radical cure.
This tendency culminated, in the United States, in the "standard treatment," developed by Bass and recommended by the National Malaria Committee, in which intensive treatment was given for two months. Bass1 stated that most patients will relapse after treatment of a week or less but that 100 per cent of cases would be cured with daily treatment for three or four months.
Recent researches, however, especially in therapeutic malaria, are giving new light on the natural history