exposed to the chilled air of the latter without being properly clad. Mount Voidhiá lies to the SE of the town of Patra, and therefore this wind is a specimen of a land-breeze. In the same town during July and August a sea-breeze is equally detrimental to the comfort and health of the inhabitants, for its violence and heat are so great that the windows are obliged to be closed by shutters all day in order to exclude the blast. New settlers are especially affected by this latter wind; to the French it proved exceedingly fatal about sixty years ago, when, before the revolution, they established some mercantile houses there. In addition to the winds above alluded to, Patra is rendered unhealthy by the marshes to its south and westward. Although cultivation of the plain may have done much, yet, as Colonel Leake justly observes," the marshy spots still existing, acted on by a powerful sun, are a fruitful source of disease." By this gentleman Patra is only considered third in the scale of unhealthiness to Anapli and Corinth, both of which are situated under lofty mountains. The Castle of the Morea, situated on a point of land which with a similar one on the opposite coast forms the narrowest strait in the Gulf of Corinth, is surrounded by marshes; it is also protected by a wet ditch that communicates with the sea at either end of the triangular promontory of which it forms the base. Through the straits opposite the Castle the wind blows with terrific force, and does not seem to counteract the evil influence of the marshes, the effects of whose malarious exhalations are written upon the unhealthy countenances of the inhabitants. The serene sky of Greece, with its splendid warm colouring that so many artists have striven to depict, and the gentle Etesian winds which have afforded the poet so many a metaphor, disappear soon after, or some time before, the harvest has been gathered in; the empty channels then become filled with rain, which falls suddenly in torrents, and, as in many parts of England, large tracts of land are inundated in consequence; the land covered being badly drained, the water remains stagnant, and then the heat of the succeeding summer, acting upon the sodden and decayed layer of vegetable matter, creates in the marshy wastes the most pestilential emanations, which produce a host of diseases. "Macies et nova febrium Terris incubuit cohors." Hor. Car. i. 3, 30. Of the effects of marsh miasma Hippocrates was well aware; he instances the Phasians, whose country is marshy, hot, wet, and woody (ή χώρη ἐκείνη ἑλώδης καὶ θερμὴ καὶ ὑδατεινὴ καὶ δασεία : op. cit.), and subject to showers at all seasons; he gives a graphic description of their fruit and the people themselves, whom he describes as pale, bloated, indolent, and unwieldy, with deep voices (φθέγγονταί τε βαρυτάτον ανθρώπων), which he attributes to the mists that they breathe. The fruits, he remarks, are cramped, and, as it were, effeminated (nonλvoμévoi). In a (τηθηλυσμένοι). former page we have described the effect of cultivation upon the diseases of a country. Greece, whilst inhabited by a free, industrious, and intelligent race, was cultivated to the greatest extent that its soil would admit of; thickly populated as it was in its prosperity, wherever the land would yield fruit it was made to do so; and we find that Herodotus considered that Greece possessed a most happily-tempered climate.* Some authors have considered that antient was more healthy than modern Greece, on account of some of the districts not being properly cultivated and drained, which neglected state is highly favourable for the development of the malarious gases that now pollute the air with their fever-germs. As to the climate being congenial to the intellectual energy of its inhabitants, which according to Aristotle it was,† we have only to look at the noble monuments that remain, both in the arts and in literature, to be convinced that either the psychical strength of the Greek was very great, and able of itself to contend against external circumstances, or that the climate was highly favourable to the *Herod. iii. 106. healthy growth of the mental qualities which characterised those who lived and flourished under its influence. The I have already alluded to the convulsions by earthquakes to which Greece has been subject, and the effect that these visitations have produced upon the limestone rocks of which its mountains and plains are formed. Strabo* called Laconia EvσELOTOs, or "easily shaken," but Leaket says that earthquakes are not frequent there. The public buildings in a land subject to such concussion require to be built accordingly, and this difficulty has been a powerful cause in evoking the talents of the architect, and of estamping on the antient Greek an honourable distinction which the moderns, whether in Greece or any other European country, do not seem competent to despoil him of. Some buildings have stood the successive earthquakes of twenty-two centuries, without being injured. Aristotle has observed that these upheavings of nature occur frequently at daybreak, and that they happen in spring and autumn, when the atmosphere is tranquil. buildings are so contrived as to be either very light or very solid, both extremes being safe modes of construction. In this hasty sketch of the climate of Greece, I have endeavoured to trace its effect upon the minds and bodies of its inhabitants. We have seen that this celebrated country embraces within its boundaries every physical and climatic condition that is necessary to call forth the energies of her sons. The wild and often impassable coast has raised a hardy set of mariners. The plains and mountains of Boeotia and Thessaly have tutored the shepherd and the hunter in everything that gives prowess in bodily vigour. The thin, bright, elastic air of Attica has smiled upon the brains and nerves of the Athenian, and the mind, that in the neighbouring Boeotian climate would have desired only to excel in the palæstra, under its genial influence was made to delight in everything intellectual. The Greek mind, however, often rose superior to the circumstances under which it was placed, and thus we find that * Strabo, viii. p. 367. even the thick air of Boeotia was insufficient to paralyse the mental energy of Hesiod, Corinna, or Plutarch. Everything seemed at one time to thrive in Greece, like seeds sown in a virgin soil. The arts, sciences, and literature sprang into luxuriance from the rich soil of the Grecian mind, encouraged as they were by every variety of climate, which, instead of only being fit for the development of a single excellence, was adapted for all; and although the full combination may not have been found in one region or one city, yet Greece, as a whole, comprehended all the conditions, both physical, mental, and climatic, calculated to evoke all that the mind of man contains. In our own country can we not see the difference between men inhabiting a low marshy soil, and those who are fortunate enough to pursue their calling in a dry invigorating air? Men, again, are indirectly affected by the kind of cattle over which they watch; and as climate and geological formation influence the one, so do we find it indirectly a powerful modifier of the habits of the other. The swineherd is a totally different man from the jockey. Some climates are favourable only to horses, whilst others encourage the breed of sheep and oxen; and as man is an ubiquitous animal, so must we expect to find him modified according to the circumstances under which he has been placed in the fulfilment of his mission,—the guardian of himself and the creatures over whom he reigns, and whose services have been placed at his command. We have seen how much the geological formation of a country has to do with its climate. I therefore think that it is but fair to bracket these two grand modifiers of man together, and thus study them. A knowledge of geology is undoubtedly necessary for the physician, and this is inseparable from the natural history of a country, when we consider how the fauna, the vegetables, the minerals, the waters, vary with the earth's crust whereon man takes up his abode, more frequently from compulsion than the still small but persuasive voice of instinct, which acts as a safe guide to the brute, whom the Creator will not allow to be subject at all times to the erring will of man. In accordance with the plan that I have hitherto adopted throughout this work, I shall place a Table of the Pestilential Constitution described by Hippocrates as a text at the head of those remarks that I intend to make in reference to this subject, of which, however, I must premise, a mere sketch is all that I shall attempt, for to do more, even were I able, would swell my pages beyond the limits of my original design. (For Table, see pp. 110 and 111.) In estimating the aptitude of a locality to produce or favour any particular epidemic, something more than the mere natural climate must be taken into consideration; for, from what has been said before, it will easily be imagined that the habitations of man exercise a material influence on the supernatant air of a district, especially during the prevalence of calms, when whatever rises from them accumulates and concentrates in such a manner as seriously to affect the health of those who inhale the poisoned atmosphere. The site of Athens, situated as it was on a soil dry and friable, having the effect of keeping the air free from redundant moisture, which was the main feature of this delightful climate, and afforded such a strong contrast to the misty air of Boeotia,-did not in itself contain the necessary conditions for producing a severe epidemic, like the Sunderbuns in India; but so soon as man fixed upon this district as his abode, and built thereon ill-constructed and ill-drained houses, traversed it with streets which, from their narrowness and overhanging houses that bordered them, were dark and moist, then did this hitherto healthy spot become a nidus for pestilence to be nurtured in, and too frequently a resting-place for other vagabond epidemics which came from afar, where they had racked out the atmospheric soil and left desolation in their track. The diseases that prevailed during this constitution were the following:-Erysipelas in several forms; fevers, ardent, remittent, and intermittent; furunculus and its allies, consumption, inflammation of the tongue, and an aphthous state of the lining |