The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-12-20
THE BLACK DEATH.

THE BLACK DEATH.
 Ina recent issue of The Sacramento Bee we find this startling special from San Francisco:
 Seventeen of the rats caught this week in Fish Alley were found, on post nor tenn examination, to be infected with the bubonic plague germ. This is larger percentage than was ever found In Manila.
 That the genuine Asiatic or bubonic piseue has existed in San Francisco for months Is beyond doubt, and that the authorities of that city have tried to suppress the facts Is equally true. We have read In the California papers so many emphatic and specific evidences of the existence of the disease that we are totally unable to understand why 1t should be denied or why those most immediately interested should try to hide the facts. Nothing but commercial reasons. the fear of injuring the busi- ness of the city, can account for the course which has been pursued. but when the safety of large city and incidentally of the entire country is jeopardised by coaesalment then concealment becomes a crime.
 There is no disease affecting the human family which is so fatal or so dreaded as this. Medical science stands practi- cally powerless where it has obtained feothoid. Hygiene and sanitation can to some extent control its ravsges. and many of those stricken with 1t recover, just as they recover from other diseases, but the doctors and their medicines are of little avail.
 That the plague is strictly an Asiatic or African disease is beyond doubt. and medical writers alfude to it in Egypt and other parts of Africa three or four cen- turies before the Christian era. but, like other contagious or infectious diseases 1t long since left its native region and spread to other countries. It has ravaged almost every country of Europe. Under the popular name of the Black Death it devastated Southern Europe. and five centuries age 1t was epidemic in Lon don. The great visitation of 15s4-5 is yet referred to with horror by English writers In September of the latter year over 31 1000 victims were reported ill Lon don, and during. and In the live months of its ravases nearly 7o,ooe deaths were reported out of total estimated popula- ton of less than half million. and it was stated~that this death rate was much below the actual fatalities. Other European cities and countries have suf- fered in like manner during the last four or i've centuries. and the disease Is dread ed throughout the Old World.
 s We are not writing history Or medical treatise. and have briefly referred to some facts in connection with the disease be- cause of Its invasion of our own .conti- nent and because 1t may become a grim reality in the United States. Like most ether dangerous diseases the plague Is to . considerable extent affected by sani- tary conditions. Oversrowding, filthy sonal unclesnlinsss and the like are favorable to the spread of this disease as they are of others. That its evils can be materially iesssned and its spread checked by strict attention to and en- forcement of sanitary and hygienic meas ures is beyond doubt. t,-. .t. ....
 As Is the case with all epidemic diseases there has been much controversy over the manner in which the plague is com municated from one person to another An hal q nRnvaVAd hSU clothing or bedding Is weakened by the statement that in Egypt and in Censtan- tinople the clothing of those who die Of the disease is sold at once without pre- caution and without spreading the disease. That it can be conveyed by merchandise is denied because while 1t ragged in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1885. cotton was loaded on ships without any precau- ton and sent to London. no case of the disease resulting.
 The idea or belief that the plague is spread by rats is a modern ono but 1t Is finding much to support 1t. Is only within a recent period that mosquitoes were considered disseminators of yellow fever, but now it is hardly doubted. If the plague is a germ disease there must be germ-carriers, and the rats are charg- ed with 1t. The item we copy from The Bee convicts the rodents by strong cir cumstantial evidence of contracting and conveying the disease. But by what ever means it spreads. or how 1t is in- cubated and carried. the fact remains that this country is face to face with it and that the government will have to meet and deal with the situation. Hiding it will not answer
 Referring to the Indian Bear Tracks"