On the Malaria of the Campagna di Roma. 117 



the republic, and which must have occasioned a frightful mor- 

 tality. But though we may not admit the term plague in its 

 most rigorous sense, some of those diseases which manifested 

 themselves at distant intervals came from Egypt by passing 

 through Greece, as that in the year 573, and ravaged not only 

 Latium, but the whole of Italy ; other plagues mentioned by 

 Livy were evidently camp diseases^ as those of 287 and that of 

 365, when the Gauls besieged the Capitol. In short, they 

 might be other epidemic diseases, which manifest themselves 

 every where under certain conditions. But they were certainly 

 not those intermittent fevers which now afflict Rome every year 

 with greater or less severity. 



From the preceding observations, we obtain the following 

 result : — 



The first inhabitants of Latium, who established themselves 

 on the hills of that desert and marshy country, and who had to 

 struggle against many obstacles in order to reduce the soil, were 

 shielded against the unwholesome atmosphere by their woollen 

 clothing, which maintained a continual perspiration, whilst their 

 assiduous and improved culture of the land contributed to pu- 

 rify the atmosphere itself. But as this culture was again ne- 

 glected on account of the numerous devastations which desolated 

 Rome and the Campagna, the unhealthy exhalations of the soil 

 were again multiplied, and the introduction of a lighter dress 

 gave to this unhealthy air an influence which it had never before 

 possessed. Brocchi relates that, in 1818, there were admitted 

 into the Hospital du Saint Esprit, in the course of the months of 

 July, August, and September, above 6000 patients, attacked 

 by fever by reason of the malaria. The soldiers who occu- 

 pied the forts on the borders of the sea, had to be relieved every 

 three or four days, and nobody was willing to reap the harvest 

 which covered the fields. 



Opinions are very various respecting the cause of this foul 

 air. Some attribute it to exhalations of sulphuretted hydrogen, 

 others to those of carbonic acid gas ; but, as Brocchi observes, 

 those reasoners seem to have forgotten, that all these gases are 

 exhaled in abundance in different parts of Italy and Sicily, which 

 lire nevertheless considered as very healthy^,j^"^j^^^.j^j.. 



