THE PLAGUE AGAIN

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 453, 11 March 1909, Page 5

THE PLAGUE AGAIN

FURTIISIt CASES. CYOS7.Y A'JTr.CRiTIIC ACTIVE. iukiuictly:; i::-to:its. IHT. TEl.EGltAl'll—l'ttlisa ASSOCI.U l;:N-i' , " -, i'l:l" ! " (Roc. March 10, 9.30 p.u:.) Sydney, March 10. Another member of tho crew of the St. Louis is suffering from plague. A third has dovoloped suspicious symptoms. Tho authorities aro actively enforcing measures to prevent tho spread of the plague. . PREVENTIVE AND PALLIATIVE. TEE RAT, THE FLEA, AND HOW TO COMBAT THEM. Dr. J. Ashburton Thompson, President of the New South AVules Board of Health, who fought the plague in Sydney in 1900, again in 1902, and move or less ever since, has lain down that tho fundamental data acquired in his investigations at Sydney were:—(l) That the epidemic spread of plague occurred independently of communication of the infection from the sick; consequently the infection of plague spread by means which were external to man. (2) That the plague rat was harmless to man, but was nevertheless the essential cause of epidemics. (3) That the intermediate agent between rat and man (and between rat and rat) was the flea. Tho infection of man was most usually contingent on his being within buildings together with plague rats, and the rendering of such buildings rat-proof was absolutely the most important item in plague prevention, and even the only one out of the whole number to which the epithet "preventive" could be justly applied. Attention was concentrated, however, on other measures which seemed to be more direct, but which, in reality, were merely remedial, or nearly palliative. The administrator faced by an outbreak of plague was perfectly right in relying on immunisation of the people—a possibility laid open to him by the genius of Mr. Haffkine—on evacuation, and on the destruction of rats. These methods were remedial, not preventive; and consequently they were interminable. If a population were immunised this year it must, if it nvere reinvaded, bo again immuned in a twelvemonth or'a little later; evacuation might have to be repeated even duirng the same season; and to the killing of rats thero was literally no end at all. But every building which was "rendered inaccessible to rats might be regarded as a fortress impregnable to that enemy for ever. The arrest of present outbreaks was a quite different matter from diminution of the liability of the country to surfer them. He did not doubt that, when a broad and comprehensive survey of all the data had been taken it would be perceived that tho exclusion of rats from dwellings was the only measure which could permanently diminish liability to invasion of plague.