Malaria : a neglected factor in the history of Greece and Rome / by W.H.S. Jones ; with an introduction by Sir R. Ross ; a concluding chapter by G.G. Ellett.

  • W. H. S. Jones
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Malaria : a neglected factor in the history of Greece and Rome / by W.H.S. Jones ; with an introduction by Sir R. Ross ; a concluding chapter by G.G. Ellett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    already probably inured to malaria in their tropical homes, would survive, while their fair- haired masters and masters’ children would gradually tend to be eliminated ; so that, after perhaps a century or two, the whole character of the population might gradually be changed.1 And I suspect this change would be much more fundamental than any which could be produced by temporary wars and invasions, because the same cause would tend to produce the same results from century to century, the fairer northerner succumbing2 where the more inured races of the south survive—just th.e opposite, in fact, to non-malarious countries, where the more vigorous northerner tends to oust the southerner. Of course, on this hypo- thesis, we might expect the original races to survive better in the non-malarious islands of the archipelago—a thing which travellers aver has actually happened. Malaria has quite possibly produced similar results in southern Italy; but its effect on that 1This certainly holds good in the case of Rome. See Juvenal, Sat. hi. 60: non possum ferre, Quirites, Graecam urbem. quamvis quota portio faecis Achaei ? iam pridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes. [Note by W. H. S. Jones.] 2 This may be illustrated by the fact that troops inured to the climate of Gaul, Spain, and Germany were struck down when they came into Italy. The former countries were probably healthy. See Caesar, de hello civili, ill. 2, and Tacitus, Histories, II. 93. [Note by W. H. S. Jones.]