PLAGUE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18103, 11 February 1922, Page 1 (Supplement)

PLAGUE.

CLEANLINESS AND HEALTH.

81 FRANK MORTON.

The health authorities of Now South Wales announce that in all probability there, will be a sharp epidemic of bubonic plague in the city during March or April. It is not the sort of statement that health authorities make without good warrant. The fact is that' plague is in Sydney now, and that March and April are the months in Sydney when fleas aro busiest and most plentiful. We shall see.

Meantime, the plaguo as it standsthree cases to dato in all these monthsis having one good effect. There is a great war on rats, and housewives aro losing their old comfortable idea of the deplorable flea as a somebuw inevitable and fairly harmless creature. Some day wo shall all stumble on the fact that fleas on the whole are infinitely more dangerous than snakes or alligators. The door is always open to diseaso while there is a flea in tho bouse. If there is a rat in the house as well as a flea, the fle.i becomes horribly more dangerous than bofore. Still, thero is no reason for alarm about bubonic. More people axe dying constantly of familiar ailments than bubonio is ever likely to kill in a white man's country. By comparison with the deadly and sinister so-called pneumonic influenza, tho menace of bubonic is almost negligible. I worked through epidemics of it in my youth, and it worried 1110 loss than a passing toothache. Fourteenth Century Pestilence, It is well to avoid confusion and keep separate things distinct. Bubonic is not the Black Death with which newspaperwriters so often got it mixed. The Black Death was a pneumonic plague, strikingly similar in its recorded symptoms to that deadly type of pneumonic " influenza" that wrought havoc in New Zealand a few years ago. Tho Black Death was associated at the outset with bubonic, tho old dirt-disease, but it was the new and special symptoms that made it deadly:

Gangrenous inflammation of the throat and lungs; Violent i>»in« in the region of the cheat: The vomiting and spitting of blood: and, The pestilential odour coming from the bodies and breath of the sick.

Where the pestilence was simply bubonic (there were a fow such cases), many recovered; but the old chroniclers tell us that from the pneumonic plague, the Black Death, there were no recoveries. In the fourteenth century, this pestilence devastated the world. Wholo districts in somo parts of Europe were completely depopulated. Great monasteries and convents were found tenanted only by their dead. Over a large part of Europe, more than half of the entire population was carried off. A contemporary account says that many "were attacked first, not in tho head, but in the lungs. The organs of respiration became quickly inflamed, sharp pains were experienced in the chest, blood was vomited, and the breath became fetid. The throat and tongue, burnt up by the excessive fever, becamo black and congested with blood. Those who drank copiously experienced no moro relief than those who drank but little."

A medical man who saw much of tho recent so-called influenza epidemic in England and tho continent of Europe, tells me that be observed precisely similar symptoms in numberless bad cases, without any threat or accompaniment of bubonic. "If you compare it with the worst form of pneumonic plague," he told me, "bubonic seems littlo moro serious than measles."

The Surest Precaution. It is well to keep these things in mind,' because scare and blind funk never yet did any good. And the queer thing to bo noted now is that while somo peoplo are very nervous about bubonic, nobody is worrying over the extreme probability that we may have a recurrence of pneumonic influenza within the noxt few months. It is recurring in an acute form just now in both England and America. However that may be, every little scare helps in so far as it helps, to make us careful. It helps particularly if it has the effect of implanting in the young a hatred of dirt and vermin. Scrupulous cleanliness is the finest and surest of all precautions against epidemics; and scrupulous cleanliness reduccs your risks of bubonic to a minimum. The flea is a bad beastie. His visitations lead to broken sleep, even when he does no more mischief, and broken sleep is bad. A fleabite is always liable to carry contagion if the last person bitten happens to have been diseased. So with flies. I do not know how it is that, despite the stern warnings issuod by scientific authorities all over the world, the average housewife is still rather unconcerned about the house-fly. That indifference is peculiarly remarkable in mothers, since houae-flies kill more children every year than all the sharks and snakes and scorpions put together. The house-fly is bred by dirt, and by dirt only. Listen to the moderate and reasonable Prolessori tr Ray Lankester-

Whilst white men havo developed an almost automatic resistance and objection to the visits of flies to their hps. eyelids, ana any wound or scratch of tho nkm-a resistance which is not shown by many savage races-they yqt allow nouso-fliea to Bwarm in their dwellings, to run about and sample their food, with an indifference which is, when the truth is known, truly horrible in its tatuity and foolhardiness, For the fact ie that the feet and proboscis of the common house-fly are covered with microbes of all sorts, picked no by his explorations upon every kind of filth. At every step . which ho takes ho plants a tew dozen microbes, which include those of infantile diarrhoea, typhoid, and other prevalent diseasos.

Powers of Health Authorities. There is more, still moro horrible. Now I put it to you that it is a curious and alarming thing that the young and tender mother, who would give her life for her child, who has gono into the gates of death to bring her child into the world, will often stand indifferently by while flies crawl about tho dinner table or visit baby's cradle. Wo aro not yet civilised. We only have an outer gloss or veneer of commercialised civilisation. As to other things utterly alien to a civilised community — intolerance, bigotry, and so forth—perhaps tho less said the better, though in any consideration of hideous vermin they should certainly be discussed. All of which leads up to this; that tho health authorities in all quasi-civilised countries should be given far greater powers than thev now enjoy; and that breaches of the laws regulating health should be far more severely punished than thev are. Anv man who by his neglect of a salutary law sets up conditions that lead to tho death of a neighbour or any other person should be tried in the Criminal Coyrt for manslaughter, and every conviction should be punished by imprisonment with harcl labour for a period not less than twelve months. There should be a world wide crusade among "civilised" peoples against rats, mice, house flies, cockroaches, and all vermin that frequent human dwelling places. The restaurant keeper who doctors tainted meat and serves it to his customers should be hanged on a first conviction, because civilised society could not afford to give that sort of rascal an opportunity to be convicted twice. With other penalties on the samo "oneral scale, we should soon be rid of our worst iiuisanees in this. kind. Our present system nf only getting htifv when we're scared is foolish to the point of insanity.