A major discovery was made by a French Army physician Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran working in Algeria, North Africa. At the hospital in Bône (now Annaba), he noticed spherical bodies from a patient's blood film, free or adherent to red blood cells. On 6 November 1880 he observed from one patient's blood the actual living parasite, describing it as "a pigmented spherical body, filiform elements which move with great vivacity, displacing the neighboring red blood cells." He also observed the process of maturation of the parasite (which is now called exflagellation of microgametocytes). He meticulously examined 200 patients, and noted the cellular bodies in all 148 cases of malaria but never in those without malaria. He also found that after treatment with quinine, the parasites disappeared from blood. These findings clearly indicated that the parasite was the cause of malaria, and establishing the germ theory (nature) of malaria. He named the parasite Oscillaria malariae (later renamed Plasmodium malariae) and reported his discovery to the French Academy of Medicine in Paris on 23 November and 28 December. For his discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1907.
