The Pacific commercial advertiser., 1910-12-25
Worlds Campaign Against Bubonic Plague
New fork Times

, the plague. 1t was noted that the rats
were i'll, too, but while the panic -strick
en- people killed the rodents, they never
suspected them as the real cause of the
disease
From the fourteenth to the nine
teenth centuries the "Black Death -
was always epidemic somewhere. Here
is a summarized list Of the visitatiOns:
1G65-London was ravaged almost as
Florence had been. De Foe, in his ac-
count of it, tells of the 10000 deaths
in a week, already mentioned He SAYS
100, that the townspeople poisoned the
aiIing rats.
1720-The "Black Death" Travelled
/ from Syria to Marseilles and killed So
900 persons.
1743-Messina suffered from another
! visitation of the plague.
ITO" Black Death reappeared in
Moscow and killed 10000 and made
fresh inroads in the Balkans, Greece
and Italy.
lS03-The plague broke out in Con
stantinople and cost $4,000 lives
1S15-It again appeared in the same
city and killed 10000 persons
1888 to 1S44-Egypt was recognized
as plague fcers and twenty-one epi-
denies occurred there during this period.
In 1899 "Black Death killed 5000
men in the French army in Egypt and
Syria.
1s7s-Another plague epidemic oc-
! CURED in Russia.
The Present Visitation.
The present visitation killed 100000
persons in Canton and $4,000 in Hong
kong in 1894. Two years later it
reached Bombay and spread through
India. The number of deaths in that
country swept upward from 1904 in
1896 to 1,022 900 in 1904, then dropped
to 332 900 in 1906 as the Indian com
mission carried on a campaign against
the f1eas and rats. In 1907 the number
of deaths in India reached 1204. 1914
For the first eight months of 1908
1896 died of the plague.
From India the "Black Death
spread to Australia, Hawaii. and Japan.
1t was discovered in Portugal. Italy,
Austria, and England, where early
warnings and prompt repressive meas
| ures kept it down. The disease was
carried from Bombay to Marseilles in a
bundle of rags consigned to a paste
/ board factory 1t has been carried
across the Atlantic Argentina, Para
quay, and Brazil. menacing the islands
of the Spanish Main nearer the United
States. In all. fftv-two countries have
! been reached by the present visitation.
Journeys by Ships.
AS a general thing the "Black
Death journeys by ships and its in-
/ l. I'M
tion in Suffolk is typical The disease
Is supposed to have been carried to
! England by rats in grain vessel from
! Odessa. A child in the village of
| Preston died in September last. Its
mother and father and neighbor. who
had nursed the little one, all succumbed
within a few days
The disease was not diagnosed then.
But it was considered so dangerous
| that eleven neighbors were isolated In
a hospital, and there have been no
cases since. Then the health author-
tiles began to notice that rats. hares,
and rabbits were dying At once the
malady was known to be ''BIack
Death. -
1t was. too, the plague in one of its
malignant forms. The disease appears
In three different ways. One is made
/ evident by swelling of the lymphatic
glands, developing painful tumors. The
mortality with this sort is seventv-five
per cent. A second form is pneumonia
/ invading the body through the lungs
and respiratory organs. It is this which
has appeared in England The third
enters the blood and the body literally
rots away in a few DAYS In all of the
! forms hemorrhages under the skin cause