Since pregnant women possess a magnetism for both the mosquito and the malaria parasite, one “merry fellow” nonchalantly explained to Defoe that when young women “came out of their native air into the marshes among the fogs and damps, there they presently changed their complexion, got an ague or two, and seldom held [survived] it above half a year, or a year at most; ‘And then,’ said he, ‘we go to the uplands again and fetch another.’” Children also died disproportionately.
