It was interesting to
know whether sulphurous emanations, received involuntarily, have a like
effect. From inquiries made by M. Fouque, it appears that in Sicily,
while most of the sulphur mines are in high districts and free from
malaria, a few are at a low level, where intermittent fever prevails. In
the latter districts, while the population of the neighboring villages
is attacked by fever in the proportion of 90 per cent., the workmen in
the sulphur mines suffer much less, not more than eight or nine per
cent. being attacked. Again, on a certain marshy plain near the
roadstead in the island of Milo (Grecian Archipelago), it is hardly
possible to spend a night without being attacked by intermittent fever,
yet on the very fertile part near the mountains are the ruins of a large
and prosperous town, Zephyria, which, 300 years ago, numbered about
40,000 inhabitants. Owing to the ravages of marsh fever the place is now
nearly deserted. One naturally asks how such a town grew to its former
populous state. Sulphur mining has been an important source of wealth in
Milo from the time of the ancient Greeks. Up to the end of last century
the sulphur was chiefly extracted at Kalamo, but since that time it
has only been mined on the east coast of the island.
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