In a recent communication to the Academy, M. de Garogna remarked that, in the printed or manuscript accounts we possess respecting the former eruptions of Santorin, many very interesting details are found concerning the different maladies occasioned by these eruptions, and observed at that epoch in the island, which support what we have said of the variable hygienic state of different places. According to these reports, the pathological result of the different eruptions included especially alarming complications, serious cerebral difficulties, suffocation, and derangement in the alimentary canal. He proved that morbid influences were only manifest when the direction of the wind brought the volcanic emanations. The parts of the island out of the course of the wind showed no trace of the maladies in question. Moreover, the sanitary condition of the places within reach of the wind became worse or improved according to the rise and fall of the wind. It should also be noticed that the morbid influence of the volcanic emanations extended to islands more or less remote from Santorin. From this report the following conclusions are to be drawn: 1. The eruption in the Bay of Santorin, while in action, had a manifest influence on the health of the people in that island. 2. It especially occasioned complicated diseases, throat distempers, bronchitis, and derangement of the digestive organs. 3. The acidiferous ashes were the direct cause of the complications, while the other morbid complaints should be attributed to sulphuric acid. 4. Vegetation was likewise affected by the eruption while active, and particularly plants of the order _Siliaceae_. 5. The changes in the vegetation were probably produced by hydrochloric acid, at the beginning of the eruption. 6. The hydro-sulphuric emanations appear, on the contrary, to have had a beneficial effect on the diseases of the grape-vine. It perhaps destroyed the _oidium_. It is evident that the question of local influences upon the duration of life is a most comprehensive and fruitful one. Nature gives us some formal indications, in dividing the maladies of the human race; and the study of places and climates in a hygienic point of view, although in its infancy, has already brought to our notice many valuable facts. This study is full of interest. We shall doubtless arrive at a knowledge of the exact relation between such a malady, such an epidemic, and such a place, or site, or position with respect to the points of the compass, as well as of the beneficial and special influence exercised upon our principal organs by the exhalations from different places, which might well be called the genii of those regions. ---------- {86} The Bishops of Rome. [Footnote 42] [Footnote 42: _Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The Bishops of Rome._ New York: Harper and Brothers, January, 1869.]