70 Historical 



Fazello 7: ' gives a few more details in the account of his ascent of 

 the 6th "of the Kalends of August", 1541; however he mentions 

 nothing but an extreme fatigue: 



We had to climb on foot the crest of the mountain; the ascent was 

 very arduous; here, the roughness of the soil, there, deep sand delayed 

 us, our feet sliding backwards; in fact, the difficulties were so great that 

 although the climb was not more than 50 steps, it took us a good two 

 hours, and reaching the summit at last, panting and dripping with 

 sweat, we lay down on the ground. (Decas I, liber II, caput IV; vol. I, 

 P. 116.) 



But a century later, in 1671, the illustrious doctor-mathematician 

 Borelli, 8 " whose attention had been aroused by the accounts of 

 travellers in South America, notes symptoms which he indicates 

 clearly: 



Among the noteworthy observations which I made at the summit 

 of Etna in the year 1671, there is an unexpected effect due to the rare- 

 faction of the air. There, in fact, moderate movements . . . brought on 

 such lassitude, that young and robust men had to rest, to sit down, 

 and to regain their strength by breathing frequently. (P. 242.) 



Then he tries to explain these symptoms; we shall see that he 

 gave successively two different theories for them. But the sensa- 

 tions which he had noted have not been experienced by all travel- 

 lers, and we see beginning here a series of apparent contradictions, 

 of which we shall mention numerous examples, even from our own 

 times. 



In fact, Riedesel, 81 in the account of his journey to Sicily, relates 

 his ascent of May 1, 1767, and he adds: 



I did not find, as various travellers say, that the air was so rare- 

 fied and thin as to check or at least to hamper the breathing greatly; 

 which may depend, besides, upon the conformation and constitution 

 of the chest and the lungs of each subject who tries it. (P. 132.) 



Demeunier, 8 - Houel, 83 who made the same ascent at about the 

 same time, do not mention observing any symptom. Delon, 84 when 

 he reached the summit of Etna, cried out enthusiastically: 



An ethereal air which crushes him, startles his being, and makes 

 him realize an existence which warns man that he is out of the region 

 to which his organs chain him. He is impressed by his rashness. . . . 



I leave to the reader the task of deciding whether this ranting 

 expresses any physiological phenomenon, and omitting other testi- 

 mony quite as unimportant, I come to the account of Dolomieu, 83 

 who on June 22, 1781, made the ascent of Etna; the celebrated 



