RESERVIORS FOR PARASITES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3181, 29 March 1911, Page 9

RESERVIORS FOR PARASITES.

CONTAGION FROM ANIMALS

In connection with certain diseases, such as sleeping sickness and the bubonic plague, it as been found that certain animals act as reserviors for the parasites which cause them. The eiocodile appears to harbor that- of sleeping sickness, arid, according to Russian naturalists, a species of marmot, is held to be the originator of the -plague. It thus acts as a. jiermanent reservior from which rats, and ultimately human beings are infected. The remarkable fact is that the marmots appear to be per manently infected with the disease, which in some way they seem able to endure. From them it may be -carried through rats -by means of fleas to man. It would thus appear that the only way to stamp out the disease would be to exterminate the marmot, and this, indeed, has been advocated by sonic. The matter is discussed 1 in a recent issue of the “American Naturalist,” by Mr H. B. Wood. It is there pointed out that even if the bobac was exterminated tlie plague would not be stamped out. In the first place, there are probably other original sources of infection. And there are, moreover, certain species of American wild animals which have, like the buboc, became permanent centres of infection. Among these are mentioned a species of ground-squirrel, and one of the wood rats. The’ground-squirrel, it is said, becomes infected by fleas from the burrowing owl. These fleas may then be carried to man by rats or cattle, or they may even pass directly from the ground-squirrel to human beings. The infection can be carried directly by means of fleas from, the ground-squirrel to rats, guinea-pigs, or man.