THE PLAQUE CONFERENCE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1116, 2 May 1911, Page 5

THE PLAQUE CONFERENCE.

AN UNSUCCESSFUL GATHERING. By Telegraph—Press Association—Oopyrieht St. Petersburg, April 30. The Plagnc Conference closed without practical results, owing to China objecting to the enlargement of the sphere of the inquiries. AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY. Brisbane, May 1. China files by mail steamer report that a Japanese specialist, while dissecting plague corpses, discovered disease gc-rms not only in the lungs and milt, but' also the brains and discharges. The discovery is believed to mark a new cpoch iu bacteriology and is likely to cause great changes in the treatment of plague victims and the principle of prevention. A MYSTERY AND A WARNING. The Mancliurian outbreak of plague, wrote "The Times" of March 24, remains both a mystery and a warning. The province had been repeatedly infected with plague during a period of eleven years, and on more than one occasion "there had been small pneumonic epidemics. Tho marmots in the mountainous regions, whence the plague was contracted afresh, are believed to have been periodically subject to the disease for at least sixty years. The Mongols and Buriats, who trapped the animals, knew how to avoid infection, but tho growing demand for skins attracted largo numbers of Chinese, who took no precautions. The conditions of li£o in tho bitter cold of Manchuria in winter, when men pack themselves like sardines in unventilaled dwellings, favoured tho spread of a pneumonic .epidemic. When it came' it was like an explosion. Many of its factors are still inexplicable, aud its most surprisiug feature was its unexampled virulence. Pneumonic plague generally has a very high rate of mortality, but on this occasion it invariably resulted in death. The symptoms were of a kind not recorded for centuries. To the facts collected by our correspondent may be added the testimony of Dr. Graham Aspland, communicated to a medical contemporary. He says that "all bodies became a dark purple colour—patches before death and general after." Somewhat similar characteristics were repeatedly noted in the fourteenth century, though whether the term "the Black Death" thus arose is not clear. They have been noticeably absent, except occasionally in a very limited form, in tli£ present great pandemic in India. The purple manifestations in Manchuria seem to suggest a reversion to an earlier type of plague.