PLAGUE-CARRYING FLEAS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8824, 28 May 1907, Page 1

PLAGUE-CARRYING FLEAS.

In his presidential address at the meeting of the Royal Socie‘y at Sydney, a few days ago, Professor Anderson Stuart quoted an extract as showing how, beyond all reasonable doubt, the rat flea had been proved to be the carrier of plague from/at to man. “Of 247 caught,” gays the report, “GO per cent, were human, 34 per cent, were rat flea°, and 6 prr cent, cat fleas. Of 85 human fleas dissected, only one had bacilli in its stomach, of -17 rat flees 23 were infected, but the four cat fleas had no baccilli at all. It is thus clear that the rat fleas are the main carriers of bacilli. Clearly, also, it is not an air-borne infection. Thus, it is showm that with a cage containing the healthy animal only 2in from (he floor in a plague room, the animaj is infected, at 2ffc above the ground it is not, obviovsly because the flea cannot jump so high. In the absence of fleas healthy animals live quite gafely in the same houses or enclosures as plague animals, but as soon as fleas are introduced the disease spreads in direct proportion to the number of fleas introduced. The roofs of native houses covered with country tiles are rat infected, and from these the fleas come down as a sort of rain upon the inhabitants, especially it the houses be dark, as they often are. Another important conclusion is that the disease can exist in a chronic form in rats, and yet can give rise to the acute form. Thus the disease lurks in the rat population during the tiros when there are no cases among human beings.”