PLAGUE PROPAGATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8214, 18 August 1906, Page 7

PLAGUE PROPAGATION.

Early last year the Seoreta'ry of State for India, at the instance of the Royal Society and the Ijister Institute, appointed a small expert committee, headed by Dr. C. J. Martin, director of the Lister Institute, to inquire into the natural history of plague and the scientific problems connected with its propagation and dissemination, in the j hope that, if knowledge on these matters could be secured, some progress might be made in the practical methods of combating the disease. The investigations of the oommiltee have been chiefly carried on in the Parel laboratory, Bombay, and it now seens likely that the whole problem of the disease will turn out on the species of rat and rat flea which carry the infection. Dr. Martin is reported to hold out that whether plague be primarily a rafc disease and epidemics among human beings merely a participation of man in what is scientifically known as the epizootic, the intimate relationship of the two is undoubted. Hence there are the strongest reasons for believing that infected rats are the most Important cause of the epidemic spread of plague'. The common Indian rat (the black variety) has the habit of climbing, and lives in the roofa of huts as well as in "runs". It is thus always on the move among human beings, and proofs continue to accumulate that the conveyance of the plague bacillus to man is mainly from the rat or his parasite the flea. The gertns of infection may be absorbed through abrasions of the skin, or be taken into the system with food, while the flea that has become infected undoubtedly carries the bacillus into healthy living bodies, as numerous experiments with rats have shown. Such questions as the habits of rats and theii parasites, their breeding seasons, and the existence of subaoute or chronic plague among them in tne hot months when disease is< not epidemic in India are being closely stndied by the committee. From 500 to. 1,000 rats have been examined in the most elaborate way, and the existence and extent of the disease throughout the year will thus, it is hoped, be determined. The East India (Progress and Condition) report, lately presented to Parliament, shows that during the seven years 1899-1905 the total recorded plague mortality in India was 4.059,800, the deaths registered in 1905 being 950,600, as against 1,144,90 C in the preceding year.