“BUBONIC”

Taranaki Daily News, 31 December 1921, Page 6

“BUBONIC”

ITS NATURE AND HISTORY. FOND OF THE FLEA AND THE RAT. SUNLIGHT ITS NATURAL ENEMY. Plague was the name once applied to any fatal epidemic, but it is now almost generally restricted to that particularly malignant disease caused by the bacillus pestis and characterised by buboes, swelling of the glands and carbuncles. The deadly nature of this bubonic plague has been demonstrated in 'Australia, where over half of its victims have died. Fortunately the outbreak has been restricted to coastal Queensland. One case only has been reported from Sydney, and the plague has not really assumed the nature of a true epidemic, spreading with lightning rapidity. But it has been deadly enough so far as it has gone, and the health officials of the Commonwealth are barring its further progress with every precaution known to medical science. There are hopes that the scourge will die as quickly as it appeared, without causing any great loss of life; but Dr. Cumpstone, the Federal quarantine officer, has issued grave warnings of its liability to flare into sudden pestilence, and no precaution can be too severe to combat the danger. The Black Death of the 14th century is supposed to have been the true bubonic plague. Its last appearance on an extensive in .England was in the historical Plague of London, in 1665 but there was an outbreak in Glasgow in 1900. During the 19th century bubonic in Europe was confined almost exclusively to Turkey and Southern Russia; but in 1898, 1904, and 1905, it raged with great virulence in India, and it has also appeared in recent years in other parts of Asia and In Africa, San Francisco and in several Australian ports. The first symptoms of plague usually include a preliminary stage of depression and pain, but the onslaught of the disease is sudden, with shivering and high temperature. Then there may be delirium, and there is marked prostration, headache, dizziness and lethargy. In one or two days swellings usually appear, due to the inflamed glands, which may be very painful and may suppurate, while there may be small hemorrhages under the skin. The plague has been known since the second century before Christ. It is said that about 70,000 died of it in London in the outbreak of 1665. The Black Death of the fourteen Ji century, which is new considered to have been bubonic, was responsible for the death of a' quarter of the population of England. In 1894 some 2500 people died of the plague in Hong Kong. In the 1900 outbreak in Sydney there were 300 cases. The researches of Yersin, Hong Kong, showed that ants, flies, bigs, and fleas are susceptible to and convey the plague. Clothing may con<ey it. It is not found in normal soil, but it has been found in the mud floors of houses where plague cases had been. The plague germ is easily killed by sunlight, and it was proved by Fraser,’ a British Government authority, that unroofing the slums in India and exposing the interior to sunlight was sufficient to kill the bacilli and abolish the plague. The chief source of infection is the flea from the infected rat—and the rat is the most susceptible thing alive to the plague. This, in conjunction with the fact that an unhealthy and dirty environment favors the disease,- shows that the best preventive of plague is a clean and hygienic mode of living.