THE PLAGUE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume II, Issue 93, 9 January 1900, Page 3

THE PLAGUE.

So much is appearing in the newspapers about the bubonic plague, says the l?evipw of Eeviews, that an article in a Fiench magazine must be called unusually topical. It shows that the plague which has so often ravaged Europe 13 not endemic there, but is an importation from the East. Each of the four groat epidemic plagues which have decimated humanity has had its origin at the mouth of some great river in the marshy flats to be found there. Thus the cholera springs from the delta of the Ganges, typhus from the mouths of the Danube, yellow fever from the delta of the Mississipi, and the plague from the delta of the Nile. To this last must bo added, in all probability, another source for the plague, namely, IndoOhina. As regards Kgypt, it was [ already infested in the thir<? century haiacQ the Christian era. It Had been greatly spread by the Tnrks, whose habits are not such as to discourage it. The plague can be communicated, not only from man to man but also by means of goods, and by rats, which are as liable to it as men are. In the absence, therefore, of a vigorous disinfection of all the cargo on a suspected ship, it is clear that there are many defects in the armour of Europe through which the enemy may creep underceived. The anti-plague serum of various doctors has the effect of greatly reducing the violence of the malady and it is certaioly remarkable that even the most modern outbreaks do not destroy life on the ernormous scale recorded in the Middle Ages.