Indeed, in
every region of the globe between the two Arctic circles there are swamps
and marshes, steeping-tanks of hemp and flax, large deltas where salt and
fresh waters mix, and yet there is no malaria there, although putrid
decomposition is on every side. On the other hand, in the same parts of
the globe there are places which are not and never were marshy, and in
which there is not the least trace of putrefaction, but which,
nevertheless, produce malaria in abundance. I reject, therefore, wholly
the paludal assumption, and in order to express this view in the title of
my paper, have been forced to employ terms which to my hearers may sound
like italicisms.
The Italians generally have not this paludal notion, for experience taught
them long ago that malaria is produced nearly everywhere--in marshy
districts as well as in those which might almost be called arid; in a
volcanic soil as well as in the deposits of the Miocene and Pliocene
periods and the ancient and modern alluvia; in a soil rich in organic
matters as well as in one containing almost none; in the plains as well as
on the hills or mountains. The word malaria (bad air), which it is the sad
privilege of Italy to have lent to all languages to express the cause of
intermittent and pernicious fevers, represents, then, among the majority
of our rural populations, the idea of an agent which may infect any sort
of country, whatever may be its hydraulic and topographical conditions,
and whatever may be its geological formation.
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