PLAGUES IN AMERICA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 6 February 1925, Page 3

PLAGUES IN AMERICA.

TWO-YEAR BATTLE,

RECURRENCE' OF CYCLE

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 31. A revival of pneumonic or bubonic plague, with a recurrence of yellow fever—both deadly diseases —is threatening to assume dangerous proportions, and in two. recent instances at least, the plague has been brought to the shores of the "United States on vessels from infested areas. The United States Health Service is taking every precaution for the battle expected in the next two years. The outbreak in Los Angeles recently took a high toll of death. The recrudescence of the plague has been brought to public attention by Dr. J. D. Long, of the Public Health Service in Washington, and he described it in’ detail to the House Appropriations Committee. He explained that, it is apparently a “recrudescence of a plague cycle that comes periodically.” The reasons are not understood from the general standpoint, although they can be explained from the local standpoint, but there seems to be a greneral recrudescence throughout the world at the present time, particularly of the rat plague, he said. “We have known that the Mediterranean ports are already infested, and all the boats that come from these ports as a matter of routine are considered as infected.” It is from that section that the plague was brought to this country in two recent instances which have been revealed for the first time. In one case the plague developed on a ship after it had been two days in New Orleans. This ship was the Atlanticos, which had come from the Mediterranean. Of 39 rats recovered after fumigation nine were infested with the plague. Shortly afterward the plague was found on. another vessel, the Craftsman, which came from Calcutta, India. Besides vessels coming from the Mediterranean, Dr. Long said that all .hose touching the ports of Africa, the west coast ports of South America, Tampico and Vera Cruz are considered highly suspicious. The plague, according to Dr. Long, is “rather a slow proposition, and it takes quite a while to get under control. For that reason. “It will increase our activities very remarkably luring 1925, and also probably durir 1926.”

Dr. Long mentioned that the most dangerous poijnts are the Canary Islands, the Azores and the North Coast of Africa. “There, very little is done,” he added, “ and there is a very strong tendency on the part of the authorities to conceal the situations.” Peru, which is one of the worst infected countries, also has done virtually nothing, Dr. Long said, though recently the authorities there have begun to fight the spread of the disease. Dr. Long stated that human cases do not result until rats are fairly well infected. Fleas, he said, transfer the disease from rats to people. J-Te said there is very little danger from the disease in winter, because fleas are not active in cold weather. In the Los Angeles outbreak the affair reached formidable proportions, and *t priest administering the sacrament to one of the sufferers, contracted the disease and fell a victim to it in a few days after the men he had ministered to had died. Another lamentable death was when one of the male nurses who had assisted an ambulance attendant in removing a. man infected with the pneumonic plague himself fell a victim to the disease, and was counted among the death roll n few hours later.