Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy, Robert Sallares [reading a book TXT] 📗

P. vivax malaria, as revealed by her demographic research.²⁵ North noted that the inhabitants of the Roman Campagna in the nineteenth century had a very fine perception of degrees of (un)healthiness within their environments:

If we were to start from almost any of the gates of Rome, and follow the main road for a few miles, carefully examining the character of the land on either side, and inquiring of such inhabitants as we might find, their opinion of the healthiness or otherwise of their immediate neighbourhood, we should be greatly struck by the apparent precision with which they would indicate varying degrees of infection, within exceedingly limited areas.²⁶

Long and bitter experience enabled the inhabitants of regions where malaria was endemic to build up a considerable stock of knowledge regarding its distribution, even though its aetiology was not understood. A passage of Xenophon, advising generals to choose healthy locations for army camps, shows clearly that this was already happening by the fourth century  in Greece. Similar advice appears in later authors.²⁷

This stock of knowledge allowed people to engage in a variety of forms of avoidance behaviour to minimize the risk of infection. The greater security of living above ground-floor level is one example, which has already been mentioned (Ch. 4. 3 above). Another method was to completely avoid perilous areas during the dangerous time of the year, in summer and autumn, as much of the population of the city of Rome did in the twelfth century , according ²⁴ Doni (1667: 129–30).

²⁵ Dobson (1997: 123–5).

²⁶ North (1896: 108).

²⁷ Xenophon, cyropaedia 1.6.16, ed. Gemoll: ka≥ g¤r lvgonteß oÛd†n pa»ontai oÈ £nqrwpoi per≤ te t0n noshr0n cwr≤wn ka≥ per≥ t0n Ëgiein0n: m3rtureß d† safe∏ß ‰katvroiß aÛt0n par≤stantai t3 te s*mata ka≥ t¤ cr*mata (For men do not stop speaking about pestilential and healthy places, since their bodies and their complexions are clear witnesses of both.); Vegetius, epitoma rei militaris 3.2.2, ed. Önnerfors: locis, ne in pestilenti regione iuxta morbosas paludes . . . milites commorentur (soldiers should not camp in a pestilential region near unhealthy marshes).

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Geographical contrasts

to Otto of Freising (Ch. 8 above). In Grosseto in 1840 no less than 43% of the people who were registered as permanently resident in the town left their homes during the summer to stay and work in Scansano, a town which was only twenty-nine kilometres south-east of Grosseto, but, significantly, situated at an altitude of 500

metres above sea level.The annual estatatura (exodus) from Grosseto had been instituted by 1333 by the government of Siena, which ruled Grosseto at the time and decreed that government officials should leave Grosseto in July and August each year to avoid malaria. It was only abolished as recently as 1897, by which time the increasing use of quinine and widespread bonifications were having a significant impact on malaria in the region.²⁸ It is very striking that mortality in Grosseto was so high even with such a large proportion of the permanent population practising avoidance behaviour. Malaria was also endemic in Grosseto among migrant workers who only spent the summer there.

It was also possible to take avoidance measures at certain times of the day and night. In the nineteenth century Romans frequently made excursions to Fiumicino (now the site of Rome’s airport, near Ostia), whose small resident population was 100% infected with malaria, during the day to have a seaside meal, but they returned to Rome before nightfall and did not sleep there. Sambon noted that at Ostia in 1900 ‘in July and August the Anopheles used to appear very punctually a few minutes after sunset and disappear again a few minutes after sunrise’.²⁹ De Tournon, without any understanding of the aetiology of malaria, advised visitors to Rome itself to avoid in dangerous parts of the city the evening strolls which are such a prominent feature of everyday life in so many Mediterranean towns (with the effect of avoiding mosquitoes).³⁰ Tommasi-Crudeli noted that in Rome in the nineteenth century: in some parts of the city the inhabitants, during the hot weather, remain indoors after sunset, because experience has taught them that during the first hour of the evening there is a risk of infection, but later on they emerge from their houses³¹

²⁸ Del Panta (1989: 29–31); Celuzza (1993: 151); Santi (1996: 150); Bueti and Corti (1998).

²⁹ Blewitt (1843: 528); Sambon (1901 a: 199).

³⁰ De Tournon (1831: i. 216): [sc. during the dangerous season] sur toutes choses, il faut éviter, pendant la soirée, les promenades, soit dans la campagne, soit dans les parties désertes de la ville.

³¹ Tommasi-Crudeli (1892: 80); Wrigley (2000: 219) quoted Berlioz’ observation that Romans disappeared from their promenade on the Pincio ‘like a cloud of gnats’ (a doubly appropriate metaphor) at seven o’clock in the evening, cf. Blewitt (1843: 165).

Geographical contrasts

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37. The site of the Circus Maximus at Rome, where chariot races were held. It is situated in a lowlying area between the Aventine and Palatine hills where there was a risk of malaria infection in the past.

Knight had earlier also noted this advice which was given by Roman doctors, adding the comment that ‘it would not be prudent to sleep with an open window’.³² Female Anopheles mosquitoes generally bite at night, commonly in the period leading up to mid-night. As recently as 1893, Filippo Pacelli noted the custom of shut-ting windows in the district on the left bank of the Tiber, near Isola Tiberina, to avoid malarial fevers.³³ Conversely, Lapi noted that in some areas of the city people kept the windows open all the time and remained healthy, but this is merely stating the obvious, namely that malaria did not occur everywhere.³⁴ Lancisi had also recommended keeping windows and doors closed. Evidently not everyone took all the precautions. In the fourth century  Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that poor Romans set off at dawn for the Circus Maximus to watch the chariot races, but neglect of essential precautions helps to explain