El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1912-07-27

in our cities. and years will be required
to wipe it out. immense expenditure
of money Will be demanded for It's sup
preston; but this will be a trlfle com
pared to the losses incurred through
interruption of commercial traffic.
Proba blv YOU have little notion Of the
widespread suffering that would De
caused by the enforcement OF Quarah-
tine against even one OF our large CEN
tiers of population
we may soon find ourselves Obliged
to make our eastern cities rat PROOF
as San Francisco has already done IN
her own behalf. To get rid of rats,
two chief methods are adopted. The
rodents are deprived of shelter, and are
kept from access to food These meth
DDS, which are carried out through the
rat proofing of buildings, sewers, and
wharves, and by systematic protection
o. garbage and all kinds of edible sup
plies, are supplemented by wholesale
poisoning and trapping incidentally,
cats should be encouraged.
The chief natural enemy Of the rat
is the homeless ard hungry cat-not
the sleek and pampered house cat, but
the mean and scrawny brute that howls
at night and has to get its living
where it can. The services of such cats
in marrying rats, breaking up rat Fam
lilies, and disturbing their breeding
places, are valuable beyond estimate
During the historic epidemic of plague
in London, an effort, inspired by igno-
rance, was made to kill off all the cats,
and, as a result the Black Death
blazed out like a confederation in a
high wind
Original Plague Spot In China.
apparently the original home of
this frightful malady is the Yunnan
province of China, which may be re-
garded as d permanent storehouse OF
plague infection. Thence, SO far as
4 al %
the great and destructive epidemics Of
the disease since the beginning of his
toric times. From that region started
the epidemic Of 1898, which in the city
of Canton alone killed $780, people.
Two years later it reached Bombay,
soon spreading all over India, where at
the present time half million human
beings are dying Of plague annually.
by this time in all likelihood,
plague would have gone long way to-
ward destroying the commerce of San
Francisco but for the work of the local
and federal health authorities, who,
aided by thousands Of intelligent and
enterprising citizens, undertook to de-
stroy the rats This work was begun
in 1907, when there were so deaths
ried out so thoroughly that in few
months the epidemic was brought to
an end. There has been no plague in
San Francisco, either in human beings
or in rats, since 1908
t'The destructiveness Of plague may
be judged from the history of one cpl
demie which. starting from China in
1884 killed 25,O00,OOO people in Europe
(nearly one-fOurth of the total popula-
tom within the few years following. 1t
is caused by a bacterial germ, bacillus
pests, which was discovered by Yersin
at HongkOng in 1894. Primarily an all
ment of rats, as I have said, it is car
ried from rat to rat and from rat t0
men by the bite of the rat-flea. The
neas deposit their eggs in the nests of
the rats, and the latter hatch them
with the warmth of their bodies.
RAT fleas bite people. Usually they
prefer to bite rats, but when the
plague sick rat is dead, and his so or
so 'bOarders' have left his cold cadaver
and camped a few days without food.
in a crack of the floor, or in I. pinch
Of dust in a corner. they will bite any
thing. A white man or Chtlaman
tastes just the same to them
In India the rat catchers Of the san