WHY OIL SELITERS DON'T GET PLAGUE.

Grey River Argus, Volume 07, 7 January 1908, Page 4

WHY OIL SELITERS DON'T GET PLAGUE.

SAVE-LIFE INDUSTRIES. ' T'hc Government of India is seriously alarm.cd.. During the past five years the plague has been slaying the na i>ves at the rate of 3,000 a day Everything possible is being done to comibolt fch© dread'M infectiion, jand scores of scientdsts are •burrcw'iin'g into the causes of the epidemic. .

. . One odd fact which -these gentlemen f 1 have discovered in the course of tihear I investigiations' is ! that oil sellers are pra.'dtioailily im.m p une from plague.. Now, (pa-nrtaffin, as we aU known, is detested b\ insests. -Con'Siequently, oil sellers, whose olo'tihtes reiek of their merchandise, are completely free from, parasites <-.i all kinds, and especially from that ipesi: of tihe tropics-, tihe flea. The fl^j it hia-s been discovered, is ■the meidium that conveys tihe plague -germ from the rat, which is the.dMef carrier of infection, to 'the 'human be- . ing, and so it coimos about 'that purveyors of paraffin aire safe from plague. Petroleum has Qther virtues. 'In the United States doctors will often tell, a workman who is threatened' with dung disease to go and find si jolb in a refinory or in the oil fields of Pennsylvania. If the disease has not progress ed itoo far the man nearly always rcooivers has health. It used to be suipposecl ttot tihe prinr ters' trade was net a particularly healthy one. Tlhere is, of course, a certain amount of dust arising from typ? metal, printers must stoioip to some ext'eat aver their, work. Yeit the printer's work has its advantages-.