The mother is more communicative; she suffers more acutely. They are
hopelessly poor, she tells me, and in debt; unlucky, moreover, in their
offspring. Two boys had already died. There are only two left.
"And this one here is in a bad way. He has grown too ill to work. He can
only mope about the place. Nothing stays in his stomach - nothing; not
milk, not an egg. Everything is rejected. The Alatri doctor treated him
for stomach trouble; so did he of Frosinone. It has done no good. Now
there is no more money for doctors. It is hard to see your children
dying before your eyes. Look at him! Just like those two others."
I looked at him.
"You sent him into the plains last summer?" I ventured.
"To Cisterna. One must make a little money, or starve."
"And you expect to keep your children alive if you send them to
Cisterna?"
I was astonished that the local medicine man had not diagnosed malaria.
I undertook that if she would put him into the train when next I went to
Rome, I would have him overhauled by a competent physician and packed
home again with written instructions. (I kept my word, and the good
doctor Salatino of the Via Torino - a Calabrian who knows something about
malaria - wrote out a treatment for this neglected case, no part of
which, I fear, has been observed.
