Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/359

Rh the same style, and all to have fallen simultaneously into the same disorder, dirt, and raggedness. Near to S. Syro is a hospital for leprosy, a disease which long lingered on in San Remo. Happily it has disappeared—at all events from this town and in 1883 the building became the Civic Hospital. But leprosy is by no means extinct on the Ligurian coast;

"it is hopelessly incurable, the limbs and the faces of the lepers being gradually eaten away, so that with several, while you look upon one side of the face, and see it apparently in the bloom of health and youth, the other has already fallen away and ceased to exist. The disease is hereditary, having remained in certain families of this district almost from time immemorial. The members of these families are prohibited from intermarrying with those of others, or indeed from marrying at all, unless it is believed that they are free from any seeds of the fatal inheritance. Sometimes the marriages, when sanctioned by magistrates and clergy, are contracted in safety, but often, after a year or two of wedded life, the terrible enemy appears again, and existence becomes a curse; thus the fearful legacy is handed on."—.

The marvel is that plague, leprosy, and typhoid fever are not endemic in these Ligurian towns. But the winter visitor to San Remo may be at ease, he will see no lepers in the place now. Should a case occur, it would at once be removed out of sight. As already said, San Remo takes its name from S. Romulus, a bishop, whose festival is on October I3th. Almost nothing is certainly known of this Bishop of Genoa, who is thought to have died in the year 350. The story goes that in old age he retired from his charge to a cave or Barma in the mountains, about five miles from San Remo. Here formerly was a