Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy (40 page)

twentieth centuries.⁷ However, there were no effective remedies for malaria in Europe in antiquity. The papal election in 1623 demonstrates how devastating
P. falciparum
malaria sometimes was in Rome before the increasing use of quinine moderated its effects both in Rome in particular and more generally in Europe as a whole. The records of the
Listae status animarum almae urbis Romae indicate a crude death rate for Rome of 43.1 per 1,000 in 1623, a bad year for malaria. This figure may be compared to the normal crude death rate of slightly over 30 per 1,000 estimated for Florence, a city unaffected by
P. falciparum
malaria, during the early seventeenth century by Cipolla, as an indication of the excess mortality that might be produced in Rome by an epidemic of malaria.⁸

⁷ Covel and Nicol (1951).

⁸ Schiavoni and Sonnino (1982: 107) record that the crude death rate in Rome in the pre-204

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To understand the demographic evidence from the periods studied by Bercé and Bonelli for the purposes of comparison with the evidence of the ancient medical authors which will be considered shortly, it has to be remembered that the population of the city of Rome during those periods was very approximately an order of magnitude smaller than it was during the time of the Roman Empire. The
Listae status animarum almae urbis Romae
recorded a population of slightly more than 90,000 people at the end of the sixteenth century, perhaps very roughly a tenth of the population of imperial Rome.⁹ Consequently the lowlying, frequently flooded areas along the Tiber, in the valleys between the various hills, as well as the lower slopes of the hills, the most dangerous areas in terms of the risk of malaria and densely occupied during the time of the Roman Empire, had a much smaller human population during the periods studied by Bercé and Bonelli. The popes from Sixtus V

in the late sixteenth century onwards had instigated a deliberate policy of shifting settlement from the lowlying areas to the vious year, 1622 (an even worse year for malaria), was 54.1 per 1,000. They note (p. 105) that the pontifical statisticians kept these demographic records precisely so as to be able to make les nombreuses observations que l’on peut faire sur la qualité de l’air
. Cipolla (1992: 78) on Florence; del Panta and Rettaroli (1994: 35–7). Spigelio (quoted by Corradi (1865: ii. 39) ) described the disease of 1622 as
febbre semiterzana maligna
. Corradi also quoted Doni on this year:
A. MDCXXII aestas atque autumnus magnum proventum malignarum febrium attulerunt, quae paucis mensibus multa hominum milia, ad vicena, vel tricena ferme atque ex his plurimos nobiles atque illustriores oppresserunt
(In the year 1622 the summer heat and the autumn brought a great crop of malignant fevers, which in a few months killed many thousands of men, up to twenty or nearly thirty thousand, including many of the nobles and more illustrious men.). Compare Cagnati’s (1599) description of the year 1593 in Rome (discussed by Corradi (1865: ii. 684–6):
abortis tertianis praesertim, quas duplices vocant, quartanis, dysenteriis, fluoribus ventris, et acutis febribus, quae aliquos interficere (Particularly common were failed tertian fevers, which they call double tertians, also quartan fevers, dysenteries, diarrhoea, and acute fevers, which caused some fatalities.). Cagnati then went on to give a detailed description of the symptoms of the intermittent fevers of that year.

Corradi (1865: i. 640) summarized 1581 as follows, a mixture of different diseases:
Mali assai perniciosi furono nell’estate in Roma, dove pure, siccome in altre parti d’Italia, caddero strabocchevoli pioggie.

Erano febbri terzane, quartane, continue con esanthemi, cioè petecchie e dissenteria
.

⁹ Schiavoni and Sonnino (1982: 97–100) record a population for the city of Rome of 90,455 in  1598. By 1699 it had climbed to 135,099. By 1797 the city’s population had increased to about 160,000, although it dropped to 112,000 by 1814, as a result of the two periods of French occupation. J. C. Russell (1985: 1–25) and Storey (1997) attempted to revise the population of the city of Rome during the period of the Roman Empire downwards to about 450,000, on the basis of the density of houses in Ostia and Pompeii. Such arguments do not take account of the evidence of ancient authors indicating that ancient Rome had large numbers of multi-storey dwellings (e.g. Aelius Aristides,
Orat.
14 p. 324, ed. Dindorf; Aulus Gellius
NA
15.1.2; Dionysius Hal.
AR
10.32.5; Vitruvius 2.8.17; Strabo 5.3.7.235C; Herodian 7.12.5–7; Cicero,
de lege agraria
, 2.96), and so a higher population density.

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205

healthier hills.¹⁰ (Human settlement was perforce concentrated in lowlying areas for much of the medieval period because of the need for drinking water, following the breakdown of most of the aqueducts, which had brought water to the city of Rome during the time of the Roman Empire.¹¹) As Delumeau put it in his monumental study of the city of Rome in the sixteenth century: It is for reasons of health that the popes now took an interest in the zone of the hills: in the summer they fled the heat and the pestilential air of the lower town.¹²

The danger of malaria was mitigated in medieval and early modern Rome by extreme avoidance behaviour (see also Ch. 11

below). For example, a substantial proportion of the population went away from the city during the dangerous period of late summer and early autumn. In the seventeenth century those who left Rome for the mountains during the summer would not return to the city before the Ides of October at the earliest.¹³ Such customs would be expected to reduce both morbidity and mortality from malaria. Presumably the very considerable extent of temporary migration during the summer away from dangerous areas, such as Rome and Grosseto, explains why the recorded crude death rates from such areas in early modern Italy often seem to have been, if anything, lower than the crude death rates in the English marshlands (see Ch. 5. 4 above), even though the combination of
P. falciparum
and
P. vivax
in Italy was more dangerous than
P. vivax
alone in the marshlands of England. In Italy in antiquity, members of the élite had the option of moving to villas in healthier areas during the summer and autumn, as the Younger Pliny did when he went to Tifernum in Umbria. However, it is not obvious that the bulk of the mass of the urban plebeians in antiquity had anywhere to go during the dangerous season, and slaves had no say in the matter.

More detailed accounts of the medical geography of the city ¹⁰ Finding safe locations for the pope and his court during the dangerous season was indeed a constant preoccupation long before the period studied by Delumeau. Toubert (1973: i. 363–4, ii. 1051–3) wrote about the eleventh and twelfth centuries as follows:
les sources narratives et les pérégrinations anciennes de la cour pontificale à travers le Latium illustrent, en tout cas, cette recherche constante de l’ ‘aria buona’ dont les malariologues ont confirmé le bien-fondé
.

¹¹ Procopius
BG
1.19.28 noted that the Romans relied on wells for their drinking water during the siege by the Goths in the sixth century .

¹² Delumeau (1957: i. 311):
C’est pour des raisons de salubrité que les Papes s’intéressent désormais à la zone des ‘monts’: l’été ils fuient la chaleur et ‘l’air pestiféré de la ville basse’
.

¹³ Doni (1667: 114).

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of Rome show that the distribution of malaria within Rome was as complicated as the topography of the city, with its numerous hills and valleys. Some districts were quite safe, while others were dangerous in the summer and autumn. Baccelli provided interesting information in a very useful but propagandistic article about malaria in the city of Rome, which was published by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1878, as part of a massive book (a goldmine of information) intended to help to justify the choice of Rome as the capital of the recently unified Italian state. Baccelli had the task of arguing that Rome was healthier than its reputation for bad air, especially among English writers and travellers, suggested. His task was in fact fairly easy by then. Extensive drainage schemes, filling in and paving over of lowlying areas, and substantial construction work all over the city, leading to the conquest of the lower land from the hills (the inverse of the movement in the sixteenth century described by Delumeau), were indeed well on the way by then to eliminating malaria from the city of Rome. Indeed the situation improved so drastically that Mendini was able to describe Rome as now the healthiest of the large Italian cities, in his hygienic guide to Rome to which Baccelli contributed a preface.¹⁴ Nevertheless Baccelli still had extensive information available about the situation before the modernization of Rome commenced: We find that on the right bank of the Tiber the centre of the Leonine city can be said to be immune to fevers; on the other hand more or less unhealthy are the side streets, Porta Angelica, the Vatican hill; the Janiculum and the entire area from the Janiculum to Porta Portese is unhealthy. On the left bank of the Tiber the unhealthiness of the vicinity of Monte Testaccio, of Porta and Via Ostiense and of Porta San Sebastiano is well known; the same may be said of the lowlying plain between the Caelian and Palatine hills, of the Aurelian wall, of Porta Metronia, of Via Ferratella until the Lateran hill and of the surroundings of Santa Croce in Jerusalem. Other more elevated localities, even if they cannot be regarded as completely immune to fevers, are sufficiently more healthy.¹⁵

¹⁴ Pesci (1971: 596–7); Mendini (1897: 83–100).

¹⁵ Baccelli (1881: 156):
Troviamo che sulla destra del Tevere la città Leonina, nel suo centro, può dirsi immune dalle febbri; più o meno malsane sono invece le vie laterali, Porta Angelica, il Monte Vaticano; malsani sono il Gianicolo e tutto quel tratto che si estende dal Gianicolo fino a Porta Portese. Sulla sinistra del Tevere è nota l’insalubrità delle adiacenze di Monte Testaccio, di Porta e via Ostiense e di Porta San Sebastiano; così pure dicasi del basso piano compreso tra il Celio e il Palatino, del recinto Aureliano, di Porta Metronia, di via Ferratella fino al colle Laterano e dei dintorni di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Altri punti più elevati, se non possono dirsi immuni, sono assai più salubri
.

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207

VIA CASSIA

Riv

River Tiber

er Aniene

Villa

Borghese

TIBURTINA

Vatican

VIA

City

Quirinal

Ospedale

Viminal

Santo Spirito

Ghetto

Capitoline

Esquiline

Janiculum

Forum

Colosseum

VIA

Isola

Palatine

P

OSPEDALE DI

R

Tiberina

E

SAN GIOVANNI

NES

VIA AURELIA

Circus

T

CAELIAN

IN

TRASTEVERE

Maximus

A

HILL

Aventine

Baths of

MONTE

Caracalla

TESTACCIO

Riv

er Tiber

VIA

TUSCOLAN

A

VIA APPIA

VIA OSTIENSE

Map 6. The city of Rome

208

City of Rome

29. The vicinity of Monte Testaccio was one district of the city of Rome that was dangerous with regard to malaria in the past. The hill is about 45

metres above sea level and is composed entirely of broken pots, which had been thrown away from the port facilities of ancient Rome on the River Tiber nearby. It is now overgrown with vegetation.

Information is also given on districts that had been afflicted by malaria before the construction work mentioned above, for example Piazza Barberini, Via Quattro Fontane, San Nicola da Tolentino, Via Urbana, and the vicinity of the Baths of Diocletian.

The drainage of the lake at the entrance of the Villa Borghese eliminated malaria from that particular district. Celli wrote that ‘it was sufficient in those days only to ride in the evening through the Villa Borghese in order to catch the fever’.¹⁶ Other writers also gave detailed accounts of the medical geography of the city of Rome with reference to malaria. One of the earliest such works was the pioneering book on the medical geography of malaria in the Roman Campagna written by Giovanni Baptista Doni, who has already been mentioned several times in passing,
de restituenda salubritate Agri Romani
, published in Florence in 1667. Doni began by observing that various countries were noted for particular diseases.

He gave as one example the ‘sweating sickness’ in England, a ¹⁶ Celli (1933: 131), referring to the first half of the nineteenth century.

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209

phenomenon of that period which has puzzled medical historians ever since. The causative pathogen might have been a hantavirus, according to the most recent research. Doni explicitly compared the
Ager Romanus
as a whole to southern Sardinia, and then concentrated on malaria in the city of Rome. He reckoned that the most heavily built-up areas of the city were healthier, also buildings facing north and east, and the districts further away from the Tiber, while areas close to the Tiber, and buildings facing south and west, and buildings in lowlying locations, particularly in the valleys, were more dangerous.¹⁷