AGENTS OF DISEASE 275 



living, gave place gradually to an effeminate 

 sentimentalism, pessimism, unbelief, hypocrisy, 

 licentiousness; while those writings of the 

 period which have come down to us clearly 

 show that malaria had become endemic. That 

 the Anopheline mosquito existed in Greece in 

 remote ages is highly probable, but as we have 

 seen, it does not at all follow that malaria 

 necessarily existed at the same time, particularly 

 if ancient Greece was peopled by a race coming 

 from northern non-malarious latitudes. As Mr. 

 Jones points out in his admirable book, there 

 seems much more reason to suppose that the 

 malarial parasite was not introduced until after 

 the Greeks had opened up an intercourse with 

 Egypt ; for malaria is essentially an African 

 disease. Probably the infection was brought 

 from Egypt by slaves and merchants, while many 

 of -those Athenians who took part in the .dis- 

 astrous expedition to Egypt in 456 B.C., must 

 have contracted the disease and returned with 

 the parasites in their blood. The local Anophe- 

 line mosquitos bit them, and drawing up the 

 parasites as they sucked the blood of their 

 victims, became infected and infective. So, 

 gradually, through the agency of those frail 

 insects the insidious disease was spread amongst 

 the inhabitants, their vital energy was sapped, 

 and the glory that once was Greece, departed 

 for ever. To-day, out of her population only 

 amounting to some 2,500,000 people, close upon 

 1,000,000 are infected with malaria. 



Surely here is an object lesson that should 

 bring home to us as we look upon its appalling 



