PLAQUE RAVAGES CHINA.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1037, 28 January 1911, Page 5

PLAQUE RAVAGES CHINA.

SCARCELY ANY RECOVERIES. MOST VIRULENT OUTBREAK ON RECORD. FOREIGN" EXPERTS NEEDED. By Telecrantt—Press Assoeiation-Copyrielit. Peking, January 26. The doctors of tho foreign Legations in Peking consider tho present outbreak of .plague in China, the most contagious and virulent in the world's history.

Scarcely any recoveries are made by the persons attacked. Yersin's serum has no effect.

' The epidemic is spreading rapidly towards Hankau. Twenty-six bodies were found along the railway south of Tientsin.

There is an exodus of foreign women and children from Peking.

The disease was propagated by Chinese hunters, who shipped furs from Vancouver.

A hundred foreign experts are urgently needed.

SYDNEY EXPERT'S VIEWS. (Rec. January 27, 10.55 p.m.)

Sydney, January 27,

Dr.' Ashburton Thompson, president of the Board of Health, and a prominent authority on bubonic plague, does not think there is anything in tho statement that plague has been spread in China otherwise than in ways already known.

• He fears that owing to the local conditions and tho want of trained esperts.the epidemic will go on until it has oshauste'd itself.

Yersin's serum has givea varying results. iri the treatment of plague cases, ranging from .comparative success to .complete failure. j.u twcnty-ouo cases in which if was employed in China tho mortality was only seven per cent.; in Hornbay it practically failed; while in Oporto, out of- H2 cases treated. with tho .serum, bnly 21 of the- patients died, which is eijual to U7B per. cent. The differences ore attributed to different methods of preparing the seriim, ,aud also to tho fact that Europeans are'less susceptible to plaguo than Orientals. There is no reason for doubting that the present day bubonic plague is identical with' tho European plagues of the Uth and .subsequent centuries. Tho discaso ceased to appear in great waves after the Great Plague of London of 1665, which was part of a pandemic wave, and gradually Svithdrew eastwards from Europe, la later years plague has shown signs of creeping westward again, ibut its advance has been much retarded by improved sanitary conditions. The rate of mortality, however, still remains extraordinarily high. The lowest recorded is 34 per cent.. in Sydney, and the highest 95 per cent' at Hong-Kong in 1899. During the first few weeks of an epidemic in Bombay the mortality rate' was calculated.by Dr. Viegas to be as high as 99 per cent. ,It is very much higher among Orientals than among Europeans. In the Bombay hospitals it was about.7o per cent, among tho former, and between 30 and 40 per cent: among the latter. . It appears, therefore, that iplaguei'is less fatal to Europeans than cLolern. The average duration of fatal ■ensesis-fivo or six days. • Patient? who survive the tenth or twelfth day have a good chance of recovery.