BLOOMINGTON - Of all pioneer trials and tribulations, "malarial sickness" was the "saddest trouble of all," commented J. H. Burnham in the 1879 history of McLean County. "Nearly every family was afflicted, disease and death being faced by all who ventured to remain in this country in the early days when the prairie sod was being broken and subdued." | From Our Past page

Today, malaria remains a debilitating, deadly disease in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. What is less well-known is that this mosquito-borne scourge wreaked havoc on pioneer life. Few settlers on the soggy prairies of Central Illinois could escape one or more bouts of malaria - a disease they called by many names, such as the "ague" (pronounced a-gew or ager), the shakes, bilious fever and autumnal fever.

The disease was marked by fluctuations in body temperature, from bone-cracking chills to frighteningly high fevers. It could linger for extended periods, making those infected unable to perform necessary tasks, such as farming or childrearing. Those who suffered through such bouts gained partial immunity, a process known by settlers as "seasoning."

Malaria "was a disease to be dreaded because of its effect upon the mind as well as upon the physical system," noted Etzuard Duis, chronicler of McLean County pioneer days. "It induced a feeling of despondency, and took away that spirit of enterprise and strong will, which bore up the settlers under misfortune."

"When I first settled in Peoria some thirty-five years ago (about 1848) the entire prairie was saturated with malaria," wrote Dr. J. Murphy in 1883. "In fact, the entire area of central Illinois was a gigantic emporium of malaria."

John Reynolds, early settler and governor, complained that malaria and his home state were so intertwined in the nation's imagination that "the idea prevailed that Illinois was a graveyard."

Quinine scarce on the frontier

Quinine, extracted from the bark of the South American cinchona tree, was an effective treatment against malaria. Also known as Jesuit or Peruvian bark, quinine was available in Central Illinois by the 1830s, if not earlier. It was sold in "rough" form like powder or in pills, most famously as "Sappington's Anti-Fever Pills," manufactured by a physician from rural Missouri. Unfortunately, due to high cost and scarce supplies, quinine was not always available on the frontier.

Silas Hubbard, a pioneer physician who practiced in the Hudson area, used calomel, a common name for mercury chloride, to treat "malarial and bilious complaints." In this instance, calomel was employed to purge, or clear out, the bowels. Not only was this procedure wholly ineffective in treating malaria, but it left some settlers with severe cases of mercury poisoning, symptoms of which included uncontrollable drooling, loosening of teeth and bleeding gums.

During the pioneer era, most physicians explained malaria by way of "miasmas" (putrid air) arising from swampy ground, sloughs, stagnant pools and the opening up of "rank" prairie soil. Malaria, or mal-aria, literally means "bad air."

It wasn't until much later that researchers learned that the cause of malaria was not bad air, but a parasitic protozoa spread by the anopheles mosquito.

Interestingly, malaria was not indigenous to the Mississippi Valley. Rather, settlers with malaria-infected blood came to Illinois and unwittingly infected local anopheles mosquitoes, which were indigenous to the Midwest.

Farming changes helpful

Clay drainage tile reshaped the Corn Belt landscape by opening up low-lying, wetland prairies to agriculture. Of course, an unintended consequence of this drain tile boom was to greatly reduce incidences of malaria. In the years after the Civil War, Central Illinois farmers began laying mile after mile of two- to four-inch clay tile under their fields. With this invisible network of drainage "pipes," farmers were now able to raise crops on the flatter (and previously wetter) stretches of the Grand Prairie. Streams were also deepened, widened and straightened through ambitious dredging operations. By the late 1800s, the "shakes" were mostly a thing of the past in the Central Illinois countryside.

Early McLean County settler Andrew W. Scogin recalled a poem penned by an unnamed New Englander visiting Illinois back in the days of endemic malaria. This author was writing to friends back East who wanted to know something of life on the prairies. Scogin remembered the poem's last stanza:

"I'd rather live on camel's rump

"And be a Yankee Doodle beggar,

"Than where they never see a stump

And shake to death with fever ager."