for some days, they had the happiness of finding many persons alive, who had been supposed dead. For instance, on the 17th, a living, but orphaned sucking child, of eighteen months, was found, named Filomena Palmieri, whom we afterwards saw, and Manro Faruli, a boy of five years, was disinterred alive on the 20th, although with a bad wound in the head, which was not perfectly healed on the 27th September, when we saw him. We learned from the father, that he was found nearly insensible, and suffered from intense thirst, which was not diminished for four or five days after, but that he did not show much desire for food. In reply to our inquiry he told us that he found urine but no excrement, where the child was discovered, and that he had fever for several days after. The boy was unable to tell us anything, either from bashfulness in our presence, or want of intellectual development, although well grown and strong in body. Our illustrious predecessors who described the earthquake of Calabria, in 1783, have recorded several cases of more prolonged fasting, but in individuals much older than these children. We are unable to say how many suffered from illness, induced by terror, but cases of cure of some diseases, by the earthquake, or by its terror, are not wanting; for instance, a man who had been confined to bed for many months, with articular pains, suddenly acquired the painless use of his limbs. The man's name is Tiberio Gallelli, and the circumstance was related to us by Signor D. A. Paradisi, of Bariele.[1]
We must now speak of the losses of each city, borough, or village, to which the scourge which we are briefly describing, extended, for it would be useless to enlarge on the ruins of Melfi, few houses there, being left standing, and all being badly injured, reminding us of the aspect of disinterred Pompeii, with the addition of the heaps of stones blocking up the streets, the walls inclined or tottering, here a beam supporting part of the roof, there a piece of framing (congregnazione) broken in pieces, standing in the
- ↑ Signor D. Vincenzo Casale wrote from Barletta, on the 16th of August, to Cav. Gussone: "The earthquake has destroyed me. I was asleep on my back, and at half-past two o'clock the vertical motion jerked me up in such a manner as caused an acute pain in my loins, and as yet I cannot hold myself straight. The horizontal motion from N.E. to S.W. did not at all affect me."
