172 MICROBES AND HEALTH. 



were not inhabitable for one year. If owners rented 

 such houses before the expiration of the prescribed time 

 they were imprisoned for three years and the tenants 

 were exiled. All the phthisical patients were forced 

 to enter the hospital for incurables in Naples, and were 

 detained there until they were either cured or dead. 

 The family with phthisis in its midst was shunned and 

 driven to want, and houses in which consumptives died 

 <3ame into disrepute and many of their owners were 

 turned into beggars. 



"Laws of a similar character were introduced and en- 

 forced in certain parts of Spain and Portugal. 



"That which is of the greatest interest to us here is 

 as to the practical benefit which followed the introduc- 

 tion of these draconic measures. According to Uffel- 

 mann, Dr. de Renzi, the historian of Italian medicine, 

 states that the injury which had been inflicted on 

 Naples by these laws was simply indescribable, and he 

 denounces the Neapolitan medical faculty in the sever- 

 est terms for participating in their practical introduc- 

 tion. Among other things Dr. A. L. Pierson wrote of 

 a Neapolitan hospital, in 1834, as follows: 'One can 

 hardly realize that so much has been said and written 

 to recommend this city as a residence for consumptives, 

 when some of the best informed Neapolitan physicians 

 estimate the deaths from consumption among the resi- 

 dents at one-fourth of the whole mortality/ One of 

 the most reliable medical publications in the English 

 language states that Drs. Spattuzzi and Somma have 

 paid great attention to the mortuary returns in the City 

 of Naples (about 1866), and affirm that one-sixth of 



