The Press. THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1897. THE PLAGUE.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9703, 15 April 1897, Page 4

The Press. THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1897. THE PLAGUE.

Unhappy India is fated to learn thai - when troubles come, they come- not single spies, but in battalions. Plague threatens to slay those who escape,the' famine. They are, we believe, not at present working on the same ground, but they have a natural gift force- $ operation, and when allied are Cmspeakably terrible. "Plague" is s vague term. There were ten plagues in Egypt, but this is tlie plague. It is thought to be the same disease as tbe "Black Death" of the fourteenth, century, which swept off half the population of Europe; but the da-' , scriptions of the Death are not nam- ,- ciently scientific to enable it "to bd,. identified with certainty. But it ■is fairly certain that the plague « London in 16G5 was the witty.. ana there is .no doubt tha*' , it was the identical disease wt | destroyed half the population ot ( Marseilles in 1720, and of Mosooyf. in 1770. But, like smallpox, .iM* . believed to be tamed and deprive^..ol I nine-tenths of its terrors for olfcieS , with good sanitation. We may, there-, j fore, read Defoe and Pepys with' | out fearing a repetition under modern conditions of the horrors they , describe. The former says that w | London " for about a month togetherI believe there did not die less than 1500 or 1700 a day." This was at the end of August and the beginning oi September. The death-rate rose and fell thus-.— June 598, July -W August 20,046, September 26.2JU, October 14,373, November 3449; December 950. But it is believed that this terrible visitation was owing to theutt-'; speakable filth of the city, which had;, not improved since Erasmus wrote bis almost incredible account of it. I? 1830 Baghdad was in a similar condition, and the people in that small ci* died at the rate of 2000 a day. &™ Bombay, which has three tunes the. population of Baghdad, had only W 8000 in the first four months ot tae plague. This is no doubt owing to the bulk of the city being clean, ana to the vigorous attack made by toe authorities on the rookeries and W» of the worst native quarters. aJ"» plague and tho filth have dwelt togfthe_. Few Europeans or weU-to-dO native? have been attacked. b"'b when the contagion did get a bold, " showed all its old virulence. w I J . about one in ten of those attacked escaped. This proves that the low mortality is not owing to the -ri*«*J of the disease, So recently aa 10./* the plague appeared in Canton ami Hon£ Kong. In the former filthy^ crowded city 100,000 are believed to have perished. In Hong, Kong •«» disease was praotically confined to w» dirty and crowded Chinese quarters. There 10.000 fi-erishea. Bufcibe VM™ >;*>

was stayed by unsparing burning, -craping, whitewashing and fumigation ou the part o£ tho authorities. As Asual, however, the natives resisted the divorce from dirt, _aud tho heroic jj-jsners, G&---* <& whom died of the contagion, had to be protected by a gunboat. These facts are a splendid vindication of careful sanitation. The pla-me is believed to be kept con-st-intly alive in some of the most insanitary parts of the earth. Cholera has its native homo in the Ganges Valley. The cholera fungus is part of the luxuriant flora of that region, and is planted in man mainly through the mon-trously insanitary native water supply. The filter Lgdg of tho Calcutta water supply completely exclude the germ. The plague has its native habitat in Persian Kurdist.au, Arabia, and parts of China. In a mild form the disease is never absent from these places A traveller gays of tho villages of Persian Kurdistan that "Whatever is most afflicting in poverty, whatever is most revolting in filthiness, is accumulated as if dc-oja-oedly around these infected dens, in ihe interior ol which live, or rather festate, from fifty to sixty men, women, and children." The season -/by these people are not exterminated by tbe plague it* that, on the innoculatory system, they have acquired a degree of immunity. They breed and ; perpetuate the bacillus, which, when it j is transplanted into virgin soil, into a population with no immunity, works appalling effects. Yet it appears as if tmworked filth were as necessary to the ravages of the deadly bacillus as people with "unfortified Wood. There has, of course, been a great gcare in Europe, chiefly promoted by anti-English journals for political purposes. The northern summer is approaching, and it is not safe to be confident, but there are reasons for thinking the alarm to ba unnecessary. A fourth of the population of Bombay have left the city. Bnt, though the incubation period of the disease is live days, which affords imple time for the infected to travel, the pest has been surprisingly little Spread. There seems now to be some reason to doubt whether the disease travels by sea. The plague killed 9000 persons in Alexandria in 1885. Cotton from Government warehouses, hotbeds of disease, continued to be shipped without any precautions. But the scourge was not carried elsewhere. Eight of the ships were proved to have had cases of plaguo on board, but there Aits no death at the ports they entered.

But these apparently reassnring facts very properly do not make the authorities lax. The cities of India have vigorously set .henhouses in order. The Legislative Council has also passed a Plague Bill, and leaders, both of Mussulmans and Hindoos, said their people would abide by its restrictions and precautions. Mr. Sayani, Mahomedan, referring to the pilgrimage to Mecca, said :— "Itis the duty of the good Moslem to perform the pilgrimage. Still, traditional law says that if he is in a place oreountry where there is plague he should not go there at all, and also, if there is plague at tho place of pilgrimage and his country is safe, he jhould not leave bis-family to go to that place." There is another resource of science, luppleiAcntary to .sanitation, and that k a treatment similar to the antitoxin treatment ot diphtheria. The fact that the villagers of Persian Kurdistan have acquired a degree of immunity from the scourge they foster, is highly suggestive. Why cannot others be thus fortified by a scientific process-? It is believed that they can. Dr. Haffkine, of Calcutta, has been diligently laying up a store ol anti-plague serum ever since the danger appeared. We cannot describe the cultivation here, but in about siweeks it appears that animals can be *' immunised,"' and can resist an unlimited charge of the plague virus. A Berum is then taken from them with which it if* believed it will be possible, by injection, to " immunise " hu__r»u beings. .■■■■*■