So these forlorn regions are at last beginning to revive.
And returning to Focà, of whose dreadful condition up to 1902 (year of the introduction of Government quinine) I have just spoken, we find that a revolution has taken place. Between that year and 1908 the birth-rate more than doubled the death-rate. In 1908 some two hundred poor folks frequented the ambulance, nearly six kilogrammes of quinine being gratuitously distributed; not one of the natives of the place was attacked by the disease; and there was a single death—an old woman of eighty, who succumbed to senile decay.[[1]]
[1] Doctor Genovese’s statistical investigations have brought an interesting little fact to light. In the debilitating pre-quinine period there was a surplus of female births; now, with increased healthfulness, those of the males preponderate.
This is an example of what the new quinine-policy has done for Italy, in briefest space of time. Well may the nation be proud of the men who conceived this genial and beneficial measure and carried it through Parliament, and of those local doctors without whose enlightened zeal such a triumph could not have been achieved. . . .
Sir Ronald Ross’s discovery, by the way, has been fruitful not only in practical humanitarian results. For instance, it has reduced North’s laborious “Roman Fever” to something little better than a curiosity. And here, on these deserted shores that were once resplendent with a great civilization—here is the place to peruse Mr. W. M. Jones’s studies on this subject. I will not give even the shortest précis of his conscientious researches nor attempt to picture their effect upon a mind trained in the old school of thought; suffice to say, that the author would persuade us that malaria is implicated, to an hitherto unsuspected extent, in the decline of ancient Greece and Rome. And he succeeds. Yes; a man accustomed to weigh evidence will admit, I think, that he has made out a suggestively strong case.
How puzzled we were to explain why the brilliant life of Magna Graecia was snuffed out suddenly, like a candle, without any appreciably efficient cause—how we listened to our preachers cackling about the inevitable consequences of Sybaritic luxury, and to the warnings of sage politicians concerning the dangers of mere town-patriotism as opposed to worthier systems of confederation! How we drank it all in! And how it warmed the cockles of our hearts to think that we were not vicious, narrow-minded heathens, such as these!
And now a vulgar gnat is declared to be at the bottom of the whole mystery.
Crudely disconcerting, these scientific discoveries. Or is it not rather hard to be dragged to earth in this callous fashion, while soaring heavenward on the wings of our edifying reflections? For the rest—the old, old story; a simple, physical explanation of what used to be an enigma brimful of moral significance.
That Mr. Jones’s facts and arguments will be found applicable to other decayed races in the old and new worlds is highly probable. Meanwhile, it takes one’s breath away quite sufficiently to realize that they apply to Hellas and her old colonies on these shores.
“‘AUTOS. Strange! My interest waxes. Tell me then, what affliction, God or Devil, wiped away the fair life upon the globe, the beasts, the birds, the delectable plantations, and all the blithe millions of the human race? What calamity fell upon them?’