535 
INFLUENCE OF MALARIA UPON GREEK AND ROMAN HISTORY 
In estimating the effects ol malaria upon the history of Greece 
and Rome several facts must be borne in mind. In the first place 
the ancients had no quinine ; the disease must have run its course 
without being mitigated by any efficient remedy. It is therefore 
probable that, in Greece at least, some element of the race was 
weeded out 1 his would be the Northern strain to which, in all 
probability, the Greeks owed their best qualities. Again, the 
virulent remittent forms of the disease seem to have been particu¬ 
larly common. The poet Martial, whose works make but a moderate¬ 
sized volume, mentions the malignant semi-tertian three times. In 
Hippocrates frequent reference is made to those cerebral forms of 
malaria which, in the words of Mason, lead to “ permanent psychical 
disturbances.” Malarial cachexia, with accompanying derangement 
of the digestive system, was very common. Furthermore, the 
extent to which malaria occupies the medical treatises is, to say the 
least, surprising. By far the greater number of the fever cases in 
the Hippocratic writings refer to malaria in its intermittent or 
remittent forms ; while in the Latin author Celsus, who flourished 
about 50 A.D., other kinds of fever are scarcely mentioned at all, so 
that in his book febris is practically equivalent to malaria. 
1 he Greeks themselves seem to have noticed that malaria often 
produced strange psychological effects. So much is plain from their 
use of the term fxe\ayx°^a and its cognates, which, in the common 
speech, denoted that a man was crazy, neurotic or even mad, while 
they were almost certainly medical terms originally, denoting malarial 
cachexia, or, sometimes, the epileptic convulsions which are often 
to be observed during a malarial attack. I he problem is made a 
little complicated by the fact that Greek medical terms rarely coincide 
exactly with any now in use, a source of confusion against which the 
historian must be always on his guard. “ Melancholy ’ denoted a good 
many kinds of bilious conditions ; but when it is observed that the 
Greeks themselves thought that quartans had their origin in black 
bile” 0 xXaiva X o\v), that Galen declares large spleens to be due to 
excess of the “ melancholy ” humour, that cases of “ melancholy ’ are 
said to be common in autumn, it seems practically certain that the 
word was often used to describe malarial states, and that the Greeks 
