The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. DEATH TO THE RAT!

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 79, 3 April 1911, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

DEATH TO THE RAT!

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MONDAY, APRIL 3, 1911.

The cases of bubonic plague which have been reported recently in A-uck land should turn the attention of the general public once more toward the baneful and insidious rat. For there is no doubt that the plague ie primarily a rat disease, and that it ie transmitted to human being* by the rat's parasites. It therefore follows that if the. rat is destroyed, the plague disappears, with it. and on this point scientific authority is entirely in accord with practical experience. There are many reasons apart: from this that render the rat one of limn's worst enemies, have referred on many previous occasions to the vatimense amount of damage done by rata, and to the strenuous efforts that arc being made to extirpate them in England and in many parts of the Continent. But the bubonic plague is the worst peril with which the presence of the rat can threaten us, and when it appears it is high time for us to heed the warning. We have no wish to make a sensation or to create anything in the way of » "plague scare," but it is a most eerioue reflection upon the Health Department officials and the municipal authorities that the bubonic plague should be at our doors once more. If the people of Auckland had taken sH the precautions that they have from time time been urged to take, if they had kepi their city clean, and above everything else, if they had conducted a ruthleea crusade against the rat, we would have had no cases of plague to record. But there is nothing to be gained by wasting time in regrets and recriminations, and it is consoling to reflect that if the citizens' of Auckland, xsaft.jjpinduced to co-operate vigorously with the authorities in a relentless onslaught upon the rat, all danger from plague will speedily disappear. "*, ■I t We repeat.that nothing can be farther from our purpose than to suggest that I there- is any excuse lor a panic All that ie required v that we should insist upon keeping o\ir <£ty in proper eaaitary condition, and more particularly that we should exterminate the rat. If this is done, we will have nothing to fear; for the bubonic plague, though one of the most dangerous of the "filthdiaeaees," cannot take root or ppread where conditions are unfavoijraWe' to its growth. But in the in pan time we may expect to suffer some of the disadvantages that naturally attach to even tie suspicion, of plague-infection. Already in Sydney the Board of Health has given notice that "all vessels arriving from New Zealand must bring to at Watson's Bay for inspection, and must at all events fco fumigated after discharging cargo, and be otherwise dealt with as may seem necessary." Tills is, of course, only an earnest of what will speedily follow if we do not take prompt and drastic measures to deal witn the situation. The view of the position taken by Dr. Asbburton Thompson, the distinguished medical expert, who presides over the Sydney Board of Health, ie by no means reassuring to us. He points out that on all previous occasions when a case of plague has been reported in Auckland, the disease has been present' in Sydney; and the proximity of the two ports has appeared to justify the assumption that when. the disease ftu manifested itself here, it has always been inported from the other side of the , Tasman Sea. But on this occasion, says Dr. Ashburton Thompson, •H.hejre can be no doubt about it. Wβ have had no plague rats in Sydney for very much more than a year past, and there are certainly none at the present time." And the inference he draws is that the infection must' be endemic in Auckland itself. With mil respect to an eminent authority, we may point put that it is practically quite impossible to prpve that there are no plague-infected rats left in Sydney, or that the disease has not eimp}y been dormant there, reviving into activity whenever circumstances become favourable for ita resurrection. But it is possible that Dr. Ashburton Thompson's eurmise is correct, and it throws upon us all the heavier responsibility for the thorough cleansing and disinfecting of our city. Sydney, as Dr. Thompson reminds us, has been swept clean of the plague, though the -work of sanitation was necessarily far more difficult there than it can be here; and there is no reason why Auckland should not be rendered absolutely immune for the present and the future from this dreaded , disease. But no half measures will do any good. The people of Auckland" cannot afford to shut their eyee any longer to the fact that conditions here are extremely favourable to the growth of the plague, and that we may expect it to become firmly rooted here unless we set to work with a will to clean up our city, more especially along the waterfront, and to wage an inexpiable war against the rat.