Corroborative Evidence Can Be Drawn From
Theocritus, Who Mentions Heath And Arbutus As Thriving In The Marine
Thickets Near Cotrone - Mountain Shrubs, Nowadays, That Have Taken Refuge
In Cooler Uplands, Together With The Wood-Pigeon Which Haunted The Same
Jungles.
It is true that he hints at marshes near Cotrone, and, indeed,
large tracts of south Italy are described as marshy by the ancients;
they may well have harboured the anopheles mosquito from time
immemorial, but it does not follow that they were malarious.
Much of the healthy physical conditions may have remained into the
Middle Ages or even later; it is strange to read, for example, in
Edrisius, of the pitch and tar that were exported to all parts from the
Bradano river, or of the torrential Sinno that "ships enter this
river - it offers excellent anchorage"; odd, too, to hear of coral
fisheries as late as the seventeenth century at Rocella Ionica, where
the waves now slumber on an even and sandy beach.
But malaria had made insidious strides, meanwhile. Dr. Genovese thinks
that by the year 1691 the entire coast was malarious and abandoned like
now, though only within the last two centuries has man actively
co-operated in its dissemination. So long as the woodlands on the plains
are cut down or grazed by goats, relatively little damage is done; but
it spells ruin to denude, in a country like this, the steep slopes of
their timber. Whoever wishes to know what mischief the goats, those
picturesque but pernicious quadrupeds, can do to a mountainous country,
should study the history of St. Helena. [Footnote: By J. C. Melliss
(London, 1875).] Thanks to the goats, Maltese fever has lately been
introduced into Calabria. Man, with his charcoal-burning, has completed
the disaster. What happens? The friable rock, no longer sustained by
plant-life, crashes down with each thunderstorm, blocks up the valleys,
devastating large tracts of fertile land; it creates swamps in the
lowlands, and impedes the outflow of water to the sea. These ravenous
fiumare have become a feature in Calabrian scenery; underneath one of
the most terrible of them lies the birthplace of Praxiteles. Dry or
half-dry during the warm months, and of formidable breadth, such
torrent-beds - the stagnant water at their skirts - are ideal
breeding-places for the anophelines from their mouth up to a height of
250 metres. So it comes about that, within recent times, rivers have
grown to be the main arteries of malaria. And there are rivers galore in
Calabria. The patriotic Barrius enumerates no of them - Father Fiore,
less learned, or more prudent, not quite so many. Deforestation and
malaria have gone hand in hand here, as in Greece, Asia Minor, North
Africa, and other countries.
Thus year after year, from one cause or another, the conditions have
become more favourable for the disease to do its fatal work.
That much of this harm has been done quite lately can often be
proved. At Caulonia, for instance, the woodlands are known to have
reached the shore a hundred years ago, and there are bare tracts of land
still bearing the name of "foresta." In a single summer (1807) a French
regiment stationed at Cosenza lost 800 men from fever, and when Rath
visited the town in 1871 it was described to him as a "vast hospital"
during the hot months; nevertheless, says he, the disease has only been
so destructive during the last two centuries, for up to that time the
forests touched the outskirts of the town and regulated the Crati-bed,
preventing the formation of marshes. The literary record of Cosenza is
one of exceptional brilliance; for acute and original thought this town
can hardly be surpassed by any other of its size on earth. Were
statistics available, I have not the slightest doubt that fever could be
shown to be largely responsible for the withering of its spiritual life.
The same fate - the same relapse from prosperity to decay - and for the
same reasons, has overtaken many other riverside villages, among them
that of Tarsia, the Caprasia of the An tonine Itinerary. "It was
described to us," says Rath, "as the most miserable and dirty village in
Calabria; but we found it worse." It remains, to-day, a highly infected
and altogether pitiable place, concerning which I have made certain
modest researches that would require, none the less, a chapter to
themselves. . . .
Perhaps I have already said over-much on the subject. An Englishman
unacquainted with malaria might think so, oblivious of the fact that Sir
Ronald Ross has called it "perhaps the most important of human
diseases." But let him go to a malarious country and see with his own
eyes something of the degradation it involves; how it stamps its
accursed imprimatur upon man and nature alike! It is the blight of
youth - the desert-maker. A well-known Italian senator has declared that
the story of south Italy is, was, and will be the story of malaria; and
the greater part of Calabria will certainly remain an enigma to the
traveller who ignores what is meant by this plague.
Malaria is the key to a correct understanding of the landscape; it
explains the inhabitants, their mode of life, their habits, their history.
XXXV
CAULONIA TO SERRA
"How do you treat your malaria patients?" I once enquired of a doctor in
India. A few good stiff doses, he said, when the attack is on; that
generally settles them. If not, they can begin again. To take quinine as
a prophylactic, he considered folly. It might grow into a habit; you
never know. . . .
It is to be hoped that such types are extinct, out there. They are
extinct hereabouts. None but an ignorant person would now traverse
malarious tracts in summer without previous quininiza-tion; or, if
infected, deal with the disease otherwise than by an amply protracted
treatment of cure. Yet it is only quite lately that we have gained our
knowledge of a proper use of the drug; and this accounts for the great
mortality long after its specific effects had been recognized by the
profession.
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