Investigations of Plague

Abstract

THE terrible intensity of the outbreak of pneumonic plague now raging in Manchuria, and the presence of plague-infected animals within our own borders, have called forth recently a number of communications on plague in the daily press. A special correspondent in The Times, in two well-informed articles (December 22, 1910, and February 6, 1911), summarises the situation, and gives an admirable sketch of the principal facts concerning the modes of spread of plague. Dr. L. W. Sambon has also contributed two letters on the subject to our contemporary. He cites some interesting historical references to the preventive methods adopted during epidemics of plague, but it is a pity that he has allowed himself to fall into error on some essential points in the epidemiology of the disease. He remarks, for example, that in his belief transmission from man to man is probably more frequent than from rat to man. If Dr. Sambon bases this statement upon personal experience of epidemics of bubonic plague, it must be said that his observations are directly opposed to the experience of many competent plague workers. Dr. Ashburton Thompson, an accepted authority, has stated that in Sydney plague owes nothing of its epidemic form to contagion from the sick. The view that bubonic plague is not directly infectious is held unanimously by authorities in India.