Sanitary Effects of Laud Drninmg. 
IG3 
noglcctcd, and produced serious and frequent sicknesses, which were 
more cflcctnul in destroying the poimlation than the arms of tlie bar- 
barians. All the historians of these remote times, and i)articularly St. 
Gregory, in his Homilies, and the deacon John, in the Life of that saint, 
give a frightful picture of the city of Rome. The air became so vitiated 
that plagues and fevers of a malignant character continually carried on 
their ravages to such a point that Peter Damien, writing in the eleventh 
century to Pope Nicliolas II., to entreat him to accept his resignation, 
alleged as the pretext the danger he ran every instant of losing his life 
by remaining in the town. 
" It was principally during the abode of the popes at Avignon that all 
which regards health was neglected at Rome, and some historians have 
not hesitated to attribute to this negligence the depopulation of the town, 
which was reduced in a little time to 30,000 inhabitants. 
" Things remained in this state to the end of the fourteenth century, 
an epoch at which the popes, resuming the ancient labours, restored 
things to their proper condition; a new title to glory of Leo X., who of 
all the popes was the one who occupied himself with this important 
object in the most especial manner. 
" It is, in part, to these precautions that we are to attribute the rapid 
increase of the population of Rome, which, I'rom 30,000 souls, reached 
in a short time to 80,000 ; and it is a thing worthy of our attention that 
after the death of this pontifi' the population quickly fell to the number 
of 32,000, because, according to the contemporary authors, everything 
having been neglected, the first calamities were renewed. 
"Happily for Rome this state of things did not continue long, because 
all successive popes, instructed, it appears, by the experience of ancient 
times, having carried on immense labours, and constructed fresh sewers, 
have given to the air of this city the necessary purity." 
Italy presents instances, though comparatively modern, of the 
removal of disease by land drainage : — 
At Varreggio," observes M. Villerme, " in the principality of Lucca, 
the inhabitants, few in number, barbarous, and miserable, were annually, 
from time immemorial, attacked about the same period with agues ; but 
in 1141 floodgates were constructed, which permitted the escape into 
the sea of the waters from the marshes, preventing at the same time 
the ingress of the ocean to these marshes both from tides and storms. 
This contrivance, which permanently suppressed the marsh, also ex- 
pelled the fevers. In short, the canton of Vareggio is at the present 
day one of the healthiest, most industrious, and richest on the coast of 
Tuscany ; and a part of those families whose boorish ancestors Sunk 
under the epidemics of the aria cativa, without knowledge to protect 
themselves, enjoy a health, a vigour, a longevity, and a moral character 
unknown to their ancestors." 
