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ROME.
(From our own Correspondent.)
BniGHT and bracing weather has succeeded the ten days’rainfall which swelled the Tiber into flood and inundatedthe lower quarters of the city; while snow lies deep on theSabine uplands, and even Soracte stands out in the virginvesture which inspired Horace, one memorable day, to thecomposition of a perfect ode. But for the usual tale of pul-monary affections, always more serious among the Italian thanamong the English speaking population, the health of the cityis excellent, and all its characteristic attractions, recreations,amusements, only awaiting the votaries who seem so slowin coming. It is fair to mention, however, that within thelast few days the arrivals have been many and distinguished,and before the month is out the season will have made astart as promising as the gayest of its predecessors.The Commission on the Influence of Woods on the Malaria
prevalent on the Roman Littoral has published its report,from which may be deduced the following conclusions :-1. The wooded parts of that region mostly remain whatthey were two centuries ago-namely, tracts of low brush-wood, sometimes cultivated for fuel, never producing treesof any considerable stem. These tracts, moreover, are
generally marshy. 2. The dogma, accepted for the last
eighty years, that the clearing, whether total or partial, ofthese wooded tracts always occasions an increase of malariais absolutely without foundation. Those places in whichthe wood had been destroyed were rather improved as
regards malaria. 3. Without ignoring the benefit whichwell-reared woods confer on climate, the Commission,keeping within the sphere of its inquiry, has found nomalarious district in the Roman province where the plant-ing of trees has produced the slightest diminution in theforce or extent of the fever. 4. The Commission can provethat the sensible augmentation of fever cases within thelast few years in certain communes is solely due to theincreased number of labourers brought to those placesfor special works, while in other communes the aug-mentation of such cases is traceable to the neglect or
abandonment of hydraulic treatment of the surroundingsoil, whether with regard to the atmospheric or undergroundwaters, or with regard to those reserved for irrigation orspecial industries. The Commission is convinced that incertain places the neglect of sanitary precautions has tendedgreatly to intensify the effects of malaria. 5. The notableaugmentation of fever in years like 1879, attributed by thepopulation to the destruction or thinning of the woods, wasfound to have been common to the whole province, and inparts where no wood was touched. Medical statistics com-pared with those of meteorology demonstrate that thesemaxima in the number of fever cases throughout all themalarious districts are in direct relation with special meteoricfacts. 6. Admitting the transport of the malarious germby means of winds to no great distance, the Commissionconcedes that a country may derive benefit from an exten-sive and thick plantation well reared and interposed betweenthe habitations and the malarious centre, provided the
plantation as regards height, direction of prevalent winds,and distance, be so placed as to form a true barrierbetween the population and the malarious centre afore-said. And yet in support of this opinion there is onlythe assertion that the new or low part of Terracinaexperienced an augmentation of fever after the felling of acork-wood, which presented many of the above-mentionedconditions for protecting the population from the malaria ofthe adjacent districts. Nevertheless, it must be noted thatalmost contemporaneously with the cutting down of thecork-wood, other changes occurred in the hydraulic con-ditions of the place, which must have proved equallydisastrous, even had the cork-wood barrier existed.7. In other localities, dense plantations, as at Sermoneta andPiperno, and woods extending far and wide around thedistrict, not so placed, however, in point of height as to forma true barrier between the townships and the neighbouringmalarious tract, neither have been, nor now are, of any availin arresting the malarious influence from the tract inquestion. 8. The Commission found that soils withoutdrainage, covered with woods or undergrowth and not culti-vated, are themselves sources of malaria. Nothing but
drying the soil will diminish the malaria, it being indifferentwhether the wood be maintained so long as the soil is wellcultivated. 9. Although the Roman province is almostdestitute of woods properly so-called along the littoral, thepine forest of Castel Fusano in the delta of the Tiber beingalmost the only one worth mentioning, still the Commissiondid not fail to test the argument based on littoral plantation.It cannot admit, with some authorities, that such woods canarrest the noxious vapour carried by the winds across theMediterranean from remote regions, since, even were suchvapours and such transport demonstrated, the woods couldkeep them off only a restricted zone of land immediatelyadjoining. The Commission, however, does not ignore thefact that important economic and agrarian interests pre-scribe the planting of the littoral. In this case not only thesoil on which it is proposed to plant, but that which is inimmediate contact with it, should be placed in such con-ditions that the waters may readily be drained off it; if not,there would simply be a new source of malaria.The Archives Italiennes de Biologie contain two notable
contributions by Dr. Tommasi Crudeli, one on the Malaria,Epidemic at the Tre Fontane near Rome in 1882, and theother on the Discovery of the Cholera Bacillus. The formerof these papers has in substance already been touched uponin THE LANCET (vide the numbers for November 1st andNovember 8th, 1884), while the latter may now bereferred to as an elaborate revindication of Pacini’s,claims to having first opened up the track which has,since been so keenly followed up. It was in 1854,in the Gazzetta Medica Italiana of Florence, that theTuscan pathologist described the microbio colerigeno(cholera-producing microbe) as first seen by him in thatyear; and in 1855, and again from 1865 to 1867, he continuedhis researches, which by that time had attracted in Germany,France, and Belgium an attention denied to them in his owncountry. Dr. Tommasi-Crudeli, as Pacini’s pupil, had occa-sion to test the doctrine of the parasitic origin of cholera atPalermo in 1866, when 4000 persons succumbed to the dis-ease, and he deduced from his experience many practicalrules which have since proved of the highest service.
Dr. J. G. Van Marter of this city has discovered at Corneto,near Civith Vecchia, two specimens of ancient dentistry aspractised by the Etruscans, the tombs in which they wer&
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found dating from the fifth century before the Christianera. Dr. Van Marter describes this treasure-trove as the" earliest known essay in dental bridge-work," and is at
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present prosecuting his researches into the practice of stop-ping the teeth, of which indications have already been notedin prehistoric tombs. An interesting paper on the subject
’ has already been contributed by him to the Independent’ Practitioner of New York.
Your contemporary, the Gazzetta Medica di Roma,founded and edited by the Cavaliere Dr. Filippo Cerasi,.after ten years’ vigorous life in a quarto form, now appears.in the more convenient octavo size. The first number of thenew series, which is published fortnightly, contains, besides.much interesting matter, an able contribution by Dr. Torquato’Baldelli on "Multiple Echinococcus of the Right Kidney."Rome, Jan. 24th.
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THE SERVICES.
Deputy Surgeon-General David Boyes Smith, of the BengalMedical Department, has been appointed Professor of Mili-tary Medicine at the Army Medical School at Netley.WAR OFFICE.—Artillery Volunteer Corps (1st Kent): John
Irvine Boswell, Gent., to be Acting Surgeon.INDIA OFFICE.-The Queen has approved of the following
promotion among the officers of the Staff Corps and IndianMilitary Forces made by the Governments in India: BrigadeSurgeon George Bidie, C.I.E., of the Madras Medical Estab-lishment, to be Deputy Surgeon-General.
ADMIRALTY.—The following appointments have beenmade:-Surgeon W. W. Jacobs, additional, to the Duncan;Surgeon Samuel W. Vasey, to Malta Hospital; SurgeonAlfred Patterson, to Haslar Hospital ; William Rowlandsto be Surgeon and Agent at Waterloo.’, RIFLE VOLLUNTEERS.—5th (Deeside Highland) VolunteerBattalion, the Gordon Highlanders : John Hector Anderson,Gent., M.B., to be Acting Surgeon.—1st Lancashire: ActingSurgeon James Bruce Macpherson resigns his appointment.-1st Surrey (South London): Samuel George Milner, Gent.,to be Acting Surgeon.
