Sa Musca Macedda 0 Comments

In Sardinian mythology, Sa Musca Macedda, (from the Sardinian: butcher fly) was a large insect, whose legend is widespread throughout Sardinia, albeit with differences mainly relating to its size which varies from the one of a large horsefly, or a large sheep or as else large as the head of an ox, but always with a deadly sting. The legend of the Musca Macedda is most likely related to the anopheles mosquito, causing malaria which was among the main mortality causes on the island ever since the anopheles was introduced by the Carthaginians, starting from the 7th-6th centuries BC, who tried to invade Sardinia and, finding the proud opposition of the Nuragic populations, limited their invasion to some coastal areas (Cagliari, Nora, Tharros).

Anopheles forced the inhabitants of Sardinia until the last century into a deadly coexistence with malaria, in Sardinian sa malarika, whose name means "unhealthy air". The agricultural-pastoral society of Sardinia abandoned the coast and continuous deforestation favoured the anopheles spreading. The deforestation which worsened the malarial situation in the region continued at a high rate when the island became the main supplier of wood for railway sleepers, which were developed on the continent and much less in Sardinia, just because of the building difficulty due to the marshy areas.

The lands near the sea, which thanks to Karim Aga Khan will become a source of wealth for those who owned them from the 1960s onwards, were neglected because they were infested with mosquitoes and therefore places of death for those who visited them.

The fearsome killer mosquito which with its bite caused death from malaria, in popular imagination became Sa Musca Macedda, a monstrous creature equipped with a poisonous and deadly sting, with two or more fiery red eyes and with the hum of its two large wings which could be heard even from a distance. Sa Musca Macedda protected, from unwanted seekers, the treasures that the ancient inhabitants had hidden near sacred wells, nuraghe, towers and castles and perhaps in some way also correlated with the treasures of The Janas.

After the unification of Italy, the senator and minister of agriculture Luigi Torelli (1864-1865), began to deal with land reclaiming in the areas at greatest risk of malaria: the Cagliari area, the upper Campidano, the lower Gallura, the Nurra (Alghero-Sassari) where the most infested areas were. At the end of the nineteenth century, the deaths caused by Plasmodium falciparum in Sardinia averaged two thousand each year.

The first scientist to recognize the relationship between malaria and marshy areas was Hippocrates, but the history of this disease preceded him by centuries. In Sardinia, malaria, present since the dawn of time, is considered the cause of some genetic modifications of the Sardinian population which have somehow created a sort of immunity against the disease.

At the end of World War II, the Rockefeller Foundation, in collaboration with the government of the newly Republican Italy, launched the Sardinia Project, an antimalarial campaign that lasted five years. In fact, the Americans had had to face malaria on the South Pacific front and had learned at their expense to deal with it with quinine first and with synthetic drugs, chloroquine and quinacrine after. In 1951 the Rockefeller Foundation declared that malaria was eradicated from Sardinia.

“If it weren't for pneumonia or malaria, especially malaria, the peasant would live for a hundred years: but malaria, once it has entered the body, does not come out, or pretends to come out, and comes and goes without ceremony like a family friend.” (Serafino Amabile Guastella 1819-1899)

Written by Daniela Toti