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.
