Profile of patients treated with malariotherapy in a psychiatric hospital in Porto Alegre, Brazil: a historical note.

Introduction: Malariotherapy was a treatment to cure neurosyphilis developed in 1917 by Wagner-Jauregg, by inoculating blood infected with malaria in patients with neurosyphilis. The patient had febrile episodes that often cured him of the syphilitic infection. This treatment won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1927 and it was introduced in Hospital Psiquiátrico São Pedro (HPSP) in 1929.