200 WORLD-POWER AND EVOLUTION 



grumblings, their crimes, and their inertia were products of physi- 

 ological disease any more than we have recognized that crime and 

 hard times are similar products. Yet it is difficult to avoid the 

 conclusion that such was the case. 



One specific disease as to which we have detailed information is 

 malaria. Anyone who has lived in a malarial country knows its 

 ravages. The form which prevails in countries like Italy rarely 

 kills people. Most persons who have it keep about their daily work 

 except when actually having a chill. But watch the work of such 

 people. See how feebly they act, how irritable they are, how care- 

 less, and how ready to leave a task half finished. Note, too, how 

 soon such conduct becomes habitual with people who suffer 

 frequently from malaria. In our own day malaria is still 

 the great scourge of Rome. A few years ago it was worse, for 

 the value of careful drainage and of the extinction of mosquitoes 

 was not then understood. In the days of the Roman Empire mala- 

 ria was apparently a far greater handicap, for then the use of qui- 

 nine was not known. In the Rome of the second century B. C. 

 more than half the people probably had the disease, or at least 

 had had it during childhood in so severe a form as to cause a per- 

 manent enlargement of the spleen. At any rate medical exami- 

 nations carried on by Ross show that today this is actually the 

 case in similarly affected parts of Greece. 



So important is this matter that W. H. S. Jones has written 

 a little book on "Malaria: a factor in the decline of Greece 

 and Rome." He finds that previous to the second century 

 before Christ malaria was merely epidemic in Rome. It occurred 

 sporadically as it occurs in some of bur American cities, but 

 its ravages were unimportant. Then, in the second century, 

 as appears from the work of Latin medical writers and others, it 

 seems to have become endemic. It was always present and every 

 child was expected to have it just as children in America are ex- 

 pected to have the measles. Ross and Jones believe that such prev- 

 alence of malaria would go far toward giving the Roman people 



