Since I have never had malaria, all I know about rigor, or the high fever that follows, is what I read from those who have had the experience. Not long ago, in preparing to write this essay, I spent some time interviewing Robert Desowitz, the American parasitologist who has so marvelously written about his many experiences working with tropical diseases over the years, e.g., The Malaria Capers, Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria, etc. I asked Bob if, while living so long in so many exotic parts of the world, he had ever come down with malaria, or any of the other tropical diseases about which he had written so much or done so much research. He said that he had not been infected with anything except Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum, that both of them came at the same time, and by accident! Acquiring malaria by accident is ironic in his case because he had spent nine years at the West African Trypanosome Research Lab in Jos, in the northern part of Nigeria, working on trypanosomes in the employ of the British Colonial Service. He then spent five more years as Chairman of the Department of Parasitology at the University of Singapore, plus several more years in southeastern Asia while with the U.S. Army at their SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) lab in Bangkok, Thailand.