Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-12-29
COMBAT THE PLAGUE
Problem of Its Control Before
the Royal Medical Society.
STUDY OF TRANSMISSION
incubation as Protection for
Human Beings.
EPIDEMICS AMONG ANIMALS
Experience in Japan Has Shown the
Practical Impossibility of Ex-
terminating Rats.
STUDY OF TRANSMISSION
EPIDEMICS AMONG ANIMALS


! Special Cablegrap TO The Star.
! LONDON. December 2S.-At a recent
! meeting Of the archaeological section of
the Royal Society of Medicine papers
were read by DR.. w. NJ. Haffkine, c. L.
I E., on The Present Methods of Combat
ing the Plague" and Dr. j. Ashburton
! Thompson, chief medical officer to the
! New South Wales government, on Pro
! lection of India from Invasion by Plague"
( DR.. Haffkine said on many occasions it
/ had been observed that plague first
started in town by attacking persons
4 who had not been away and among whom
no history Of contact with people from an
| infected placa could be discovered And
vice versa, in every country invaded by
! the disease there were districts. towns or
villages in which, though the people were
| in direct communication with infected
! places and cases of plague were con-
stantiy imported into them, the disease
got no footing and the locality remained
exempt from invasion.
From the first it was seen that under
7 ordinary circumstances the microbe of
plague was easily killed by disnfectants
ana, therefore, if inanimate objects were
| Important carriers OF plague. disinfection
should generally be an effective check to
It's spread, and on this presumption the
aroVe measures were devised. According
to numerous observations, however, made
I by health authorities, Il house, it's fur
niture, all the belongings OF the inmates
and the inmates themselves might be
washed and disinfected repeatedly, and
yet cases of plague might occur subse-
| quent to each disInfection if people were
allowed to stay i'll that house
| Coming to the measures relating to the
lower animals. these had for their object
and, he believed, rightly SO, the rat and
the flea; but spontaneous epidemics of
| plague Broke out also among squirrels
tarbasans, guinea pigs monkeys, mice
kangaroos III Australia and some other
animals, which contributed to keeping the
| epidemic alive.
Rat determination
Measures for the destruction of rats
were now carried out wherever plague
made its appearance. But nowhere, pos
sibly, had the effect of these measures
been more carefully gone into than in
| Sydney, under the direction of DR.. Ash
burton Thompson. The campaign against
rats was the most rational and the best
! founded of all the measures suggested for
stamping out the plague. y carefully
organized campaign against rats in sgd
ney produced, however, no sensible effect
| on their number, and the opinion to which
the medical officer of New South Wales
| came was that determination of rats in
any large area by poisoning and trapping
was practically impossible. India had
now had, in the plague bacillus, eleven
! years experience of most devastating
| virus for these animals, and as yet there
was no sign that this Involuntary ex-
| pertinent had rid the country of their
| presence.
| In Toxic alone 1850, coo of these ami
| mails had been killed but the slaughter
! seemed only to have prepared more favor
able conditions for the multiplication of
| the survivors. Though. therefore, the
measures against rats We're a. most i'm
portant item in an anti-plague campaign,
! the question whether any noticeable i'm
preston could be made on the epidemic
| by these measures within the length of
generation, or even in a longer period. was
a matter of great uncertainty. Thus often
ended In disappointment what might be
| termed the first stage of the struggle
against that diSease-namely, the efforts
| of stamping or keeping it out. When
plague first occurred in a given quarter
| of Il city. however, it remained confined
| to that quarter for a certain time. There
was thus no necessity for going far afield.
incubation of Natives.
The ultimate method OF combating the
bubonic PLACE i'll the areas in which it
becomes endemic was that of comforting
on the population immunity from the dis
ease by means of an artificial treatment.
The incubation now in force in India re-
duced the liability to attack in the case
of a native of India to less than one
third Of what it was in d non-inoculated
India. In the one-third Of cases which
still occurred the recovery rate was at
least double that in The non-inoculated at
tackled, the ultimate result being a reduc-
ion of the plague mortality by some 50
per cent of what il was in non-inOculated
Indians. In an inoculated European an
attack of plague, if it subsequently oc
Cured, has. as far as was known to him,
always ended in recovery.
Records in India.
The incubation was applicable to per-
sons already infected and ncubating the
plague and prevented the appearance of
symptoms. or else mitgated the attack,
fact which disclosed a basis for the bac
terio- therapeutic treatment of disease. In
natives of India the degree of immunity,
conferred by this incubation. though
gradually vanishing, seemed to last dur
ing several outbreaks of plague; and in
Europeans the effect had not yet been
seen to disappear in the space of time
since 1897 that this incubation had been
under study. The part of India now eN-
posed more dangerously than all the
fothers is the united provinces OF Agra
and Oudh.
over 100000 persons are recorded as
having died of plague in India since the
existence of the disease was diagnosed in
Bombay in 1896: and. as the system of
registration is admittedly defective the
fun total is probably even larger.
NEW SITE FOR CANAL LOCKS.