The technique reached its peak of sophistication in the early 20th century with malariotherapy, in which Plasmodium vivax, a causative agent of malaria, was allowed to infect already ill patients in order to produce intense fever for therapeutic ends. The sophistication of this approach lay in using effective anti-malarial drugs to control the P. vivax infection, while maintaining the fever it causes to the detriment of other, ongoing, and then-incurable infections present in the patient, such as late-stage syphilis. This type of pyrotherapy was most famously used by psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Jauregg, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1927 for his elaboration of the procedure in treating neurosyphilitics.[2]