RECLAMATION OF MALARIOUS COUNTRIES. 785 



all competitors. That some one competent, and of influence sufficient 

 to direct sucli a movement, may shortly arise, is not altogether improb- 

 able, for already the president of one of the great Eastern trunk lines, 

 when recently recapitulating what his board of management had done 

 to cultivate such attachment in its employes, said : 



" I hope to see the day when this society will be extended into a 

 great co-operative association ; when the men in this service will indi- 

 vidually have pecuniary interests in this vast property ; when the men 

 who run the trains and operate the machinery, and all others having 

 steady employment, will be part owners in this great corporation ; 

 when they will in every sense be identified with and form a part of 

 this company." 







TOMMASI-CKUDELI ON MALAKIOUS COUNTRIES, 

 AND THEIR RECLAMATION.* 



DISMISSING from scientific terminology the words " marsh miasm " 

 and " marsh soil," and replacing them by " malaria" and " ma- 

 larious soil," the author traces the fever-poison thus indicated to " an 

 agent which can infect the soil of any country, however that soil may 

 differ from other soils in hydrographical and topographical conditions 

 and geological composition." 



This agent is a living organism inferred to exist long before mi- 

 croscopy. That its character should remain uniform in soils the most 

 diverse proves that it can not result from the chemical reaction of 

 these soils. This persistent uniformity is easily understood on the ad- 

 mission that malaria is due to a fermentative organism which finds 

 conditions favorable to its life and its multiplication in soils the most 

 various, as is the case with thousands of other organisms much higher 

 than the rudimentary vegetations which constitute living ferments. 



The increasing intensity of the poison in malarious soils abandoned 

 to themselves is especially demonstrable in Italy. Etruscan and Latin 

 cities Rome herself arose in malarious regions, and they flourished 

 mainly on account of the soil reclamation, which in the course of cent- 

 uries diminished the production of the poison, without, however, suc- 

 ceeding in wholly suppressing it. The abandonment of the reclaim- 

 ing processes led to the redevelopment of the poison first during the 

 Roman domination in the conquered and devastated Etruria, after- 

 ward in Rome herself on the fall of the empire, and finally in Southern 

 Italy. This redevelopment of malaria in the Roman Campagna has 

 been witnessed in times not very remote from ours, localities where it 

 was possible to enjoy summer residence (villeggiatura) having at that 

 season become uninhabitable. In these localities the physical condi- 



* Abstract by the " Lancet " from an article published in the " Nuova Antologia." 

 vol. xxvii. 50 



