6
rats may be destroyed before the grain reaches its destination. Ex-
posure to the sun will kill fleas either in the personal effects of
travellers or in bags of grain, and to obtain this exposure it is no1
generally necessary to empty the grain bags, since fleas, when separated
from rats, are not likely to burrow deeply into the bags. If the
weather is cloudy, the fleas cannot be killed in this way, but rat-fleas
are not likely to remain long either in bags of grain in which there art
no rats or in the clothing or on the persons of human beings and the
regulation provides that, in case exposure to the sun cannot be arranged
for, travelers and grain may be prevented from entering the town 03
village for two days.
Rat destruc-
tion.
4. Where adequate measures have not been taken to exclude rats
from houses and god owns, other steps should be taken, when there is a
danger of plague, to reduce the number of rats by trapping and poison-
ing. If rat destruction is to do any good, it must be undertaken on
as large a scale as possible and under reliable supervision. The
catching or killing of a few rats in a locality can have little or no efíect
on the total number and. is mero waste of money ; unless the operations
are intelligently and honestly supervised, there will be little rat
destruction, though the reports of the staff employed may indicate great
activity. Difficulties have been experienced in securing the co-oper-
ation of the people in rat destruction ; baits are sometimes removed,
before the rats have had an opportunity of taking them and various
devices have been adopted to prevent rats getting into traps ; but there
is reason to believe that the obstruction met with is often duo to fear of
the steps which may be taken by the plague authorities if infected rats
are found. It should therefore be explained carefully that the chief
object of the operations is to destroy the rats before they become
infected.
The best time to start a campaign against rats is the season when
there is no plague, generally the hot weather ; but rat destruction is
also useful when plague is present. The finding of infected rats then
among those caught should not bo allowed to cause the apprehension,
that special measures will be taken in regard to the particular houses
in which they are.caught.
Inoculation,
5. When an area is actually infected or is imminently threatened,
inoculation should be encouraged in every possible way. In the office
of every District Medical Officer there should always be kept a sufficeint
number of syringes. Haffkine's vaccine need not be kept in stock but,
as soon as there are any signs of an epidemic, such as rat mortality or
an indigenous human case, a sufficient supply—say 1,000 doses— to
provide against a sudden rush for inoculation, should be ordered by
telegram from the Bombay Bacteriological Laboratory at Parel ; and if
there are indications that people are likely to take to inoculation,
further supplies should be ordered without delay,
Where it is specially necessary to encourage inoculation,- the col-
lector may grant subsistence allowances at rates not exceeding four anras
a day for an adult and two annas a day for a minor who may be tem-
porarily incapacitated for work as a result of inoculation. Such an
allowance should not be paid to any one individual for more than three
days.
Every person successfully inoculated shall be given a certificate by
the inoculating officer in the form shown in Appendix F.