RAT PLAGUE
WORLD’S BIGGEST SAYS OXFORD HYGIENIST Air Mail—Special Correspondent! LONDON, sth August. The present serious spread of ani-mal-borne diseases was due to quicker transport, and particularly the greater speed of ships, declared Mr Charles Elton, director of the Bureau of Animal Population, at Oxford University, when he spoke at the British Social Hygiene Council’s summer school, this week. “Few people realise,” he said, “that we are now in the middle of one of the biggest endemics of bubonic plague which there has ever been. In distribution it is probably the biggest, but in mortality it is not as serious as the Black Death or the plague which broke out in ancient Rome. It started in China in 1894, and from there it has spread to India and South Africa. The control of ship rats has not been thorough enough to prevent it spreading to every part of the world. The flea which carries the plague from rats to rats does not bite people, and so there has been no plague among humans. If it did there might be a very bad situation. At present it is the animals which are suffering.”
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Bibliographic details
Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 28 August 1939, Page 2
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192RAT PLAGUE Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 28 August 1939, Page 2
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