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Prevention of Communicable Disease: Death

Bubonic Plague (Black Death).- This historic disease which destroyed upwards of 50 per cent of the population of England in the fourteenth century has, from time to time, ravaged nearly every part of the civilized world. It is caused by a vegetable micro-organism, the Bacillus pestis. Rats and other small rodents are very susceptible to this disease and it is communicated by them to man through the medium of fleas. There are three types of plague: (a) bubonic, characterized by glandular swelling. This is the form transmitted from rats to man by means of fleas; (b) pneumonic, which is very much like pneumonia and which may be transmitted by contact infection in the same manner as typhoid fever; (c) septicemic, in which the patient is literally saturated with plague bacilli. This is transmitted by contact infection. The mortality ranges from 15 per cent up to as high as 50 per cent or 75 per cent. Death in the septicemic type is a matter of hours; in the pneumonic type, of days; and in the bubonic type, of one or two weeks.

In rats the disease may become chronic.

It is most prevalent among rats when they are shut up in their holes in winter, but is most often communicated to human beings during summer. Then the rats are abroad and the fleas which have bitten the infected rodents are widely scattered through the community. The disease, however, may be communicated at any season of the year. The only remedy is the destruction of rats by means elsewhere recommended.