The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-03-31

DR. YERSIN AND PLAGUE NlRuo'
 In view of the importance which at taches to Dr. Yersin's discovery of the plague virus and it's antitoXin, the fol- lowing notes on his work may be Of in- terest. When a youth of twenty, Yer sin had the rare good fortune to obtain an entrance to the Institute Pasteur' The extraordinary ardor with which he devoted himself to his work rapidly won for him the admiration and respect of all his colleagues. When little more than student, RonX signalled him out to assist him in those important re- searches on the toxin of diphtherla which have since become so memora- ble, and which were communicated to the scientific world under the joint names of the master and his pupil. While at Tonkin, in the spring of 1894, he received the request from the French government to proceed to Hong Kong to study the plague which had recently broken out there. Yersin started off on his mission, and arrived in Hong Kong few weeks after the plague had commenced its terrible ca reer in that city-a career which had already claimed the lives of three hum dred Chinese, and which was yet to exact a tribute of over one hundred thousand. Yersin describes how, on reaching Hong Kong, he found the au- thorities busy rapidly erecting tempo rary hospitals, the existing accommo- dation being quite inadequate to cope with the widespread dimensions of the epidemic. He obtained permission to erect a small hut within the precincts of the principal hospital: and there, in concentrated plague atmosphere, he took up his quarters, and hastily im- provisng a laboratory, commenced his investigations. So far the plague had confined itself to the insanitary Chinese quarters of the city; and Yersin men, | tions that the wretched cabins occupied by the natives were often not only without windows of any kind, but were sunk below the level of the ground, which, combined with the shocking | overcrowding which prevailed, con- verted such dens into plague-incuba- 1 tors of the most fulsome and dangerous | character.
 | In these infected districts, one of the | first things which attracted Yersin's attention was the extraordinary num- Der of dead rats which lay about in all directions in the houses as we'll as In the streets; but on inquiry, he soon learned that this immortality was a ,1yaII fnrari1ppar If p1a olIa
 that the latter usually attacks animals such as rats and mice, and in the coun- l try districts swine and buffaloes, before it touches human beings. An examina- | tion of these dead rats showed that their symptoms differed in no way from l those which characterize the plague in ! man, and the extreme susceptibility of | these animals furnished Yersin at once 1 with a valuable means of tracking out
 the virus. His first step was to make l careful examinations of the bubonic material present in the tumors which | accompany the disease, and here he
 discovered immense numbers of a short
 bacillus which appeared to be almost
 exclusively in possession of the field l These he found were readily stained
 and could be cultivated with ease in the
 usual bacterial media Further inves-
 tigation showed that these same bacill
 were invariably present in the ganglia | and liver and spleen of plague patients; l that they were, however, rarely to he
 found in the blood, and then but in
 small numbers, and usually only in
 rapidly fatal cases short time before death.-Nature