PLAGUE PRECAUTIONS,

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 3975, 21 March 1900, Page 2

PLAGUE PRECAUTIONS,

TO THE BDITOB. Sib, — Though your article dealing with the importation of plague is most cogent, we may almost fear that the work is done. Dr King says the rats in Auckland 'are dying from some unknown cause, ' which was exactly what we heard from Sydney for a fortnight, before the outbreak there. It is to be remembered that plague is essentially a rat disease which we get only incidentally by three chief ways : — Plague-stricken rats dying in our water supply ; or passing over our food or biting; or plague killed rats being handled especially, by those with cuts or scratches about the hands, etc. The talk about plague being a dirt disease is undoubted rubbish, as much as the claim of the Doctors to give more than ' symptomatic ' treatment, which is, so to speak, ice to reduce 1 fever from a dislocation. There ; is no cure and no treatment known ; no prevention except (practical) destruction of shore rats and keeping out of ship rats, '■ though fortunately the bacillus s does not live long outside a body of some kind. No term save the using up of the rat population, s when the disease has nothing more i to live on., e.gt, Oporto a great seaport, but without much rats habitable environs. Cordons were formed, transit forbidden, most of the people camped in the fields, many died, the rats all died au. i the people went back. This wa^ only a year ago. Such measures- , are impossible out here, but the question before us is. ' How are > we to get rid of the rats on any extended scale?' Traps are no use for such a purpose, poison of any kind the most wary of vermin learn to avoid, artificial rat epidemics may be, but I know of hod©. It must be r©m©rab©*©d that the plague among us increases in virulence with the approach of cold weather, when the rats come into houses for shelter more, in which it differs from other diseases. Whoever can answer my question will save Tauranga and perhaps the Colony. — I am etc., M. J. Stewart. s ■ —