Report on the outbreak of plague at Sydney [1900-1907] / by J. Ashburton Thompson, Chief Medical Officer of the Government and President of the Board of Health.
- New South Wales. Department of Public Health
- Date:
- 1900-1908
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Report on the outbreak of plague at Sydney [1900-1907] / by J. Ashburton Thompson, Chief Medical Officer of the Government and President of the Board of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![seventy-five hours only, although the patient was a man of 24, and in excellent health at the time he received the infection. Extinction of the epidemic was not due, then, to enfeeblement of the virus, or if in some degree due to this, was not due to it alone. 34. Fluctuation in the weekly number of attacks.—The larger number of persons attacked during the second period of six weeks, was almost entirely associated with the city of Sydney, and very largely with that central part of the city along which George-street runs, and which is bounded on the west by Darling Harbour. That is the centre of the business portion of Sydney, and consequently is more thickly populated during day-light hours than any other. The persons referred to did not live in this locality, or did so in very small proportion; they merely resorted there during the day. Those of them who resided at a distance did so for the most part in neighbourlioods which there was no tangible reason for suspecting of infection Avith plague; on the other hand, they were easily connected with individual premises in that part of the city which were either shown to have yielded dead rats in number, or in the immediate neighbourhood of which rats actually infected with plague had been identified. In short, the weekly increase referred to appeared to be associated witli wider prevalence of the epizootic on a thickly-populated area. Communication between successive Cases. 85. This was the subject of careful inquiry in every case. No communication was detected or suspected between any case and a preceding case, except on premises which yielded multiple cases; except also the 4 cases w4iich occurred at 2 adjoining cottages on the Paddiugton area ; except, also, 3 cases M'hicli occurred in two adjoining cottages on the Pyrmont area; except, lastly, case 102, Chippendale area, with which patient at the time of her attack (IStli April) was a Avoman who had been seized 20th February, admitted to hospital 2Gth February, and discharged therefrom 18th March. All of the instances referred to are fully described in their place, and the nature of their relation to each other is there discussed at length. Evidence as to Place Infection. 3G. The Plague Commission in India summed up the evidence it had gathered as to place-infection and the maintenance of the disease by that condition in the following sentences:— . . . the universal experience of plague in India proves . . . that houses into Avhich the infection of plague has been imported, whether by men or by rats, are infective . . . ; and tlie general experience on this question is summed up in the expression current in India that plague is essentially a disease of locality.* What evidence on this important pohit ])as been furnished by experience at Sydney ? 37. In 1900 the number of dwellings which harboured cases of plague (that is to say, whether they were or were not adjudged places of infection for those cases) was 2S(). Only 10 of them yielded multij^le cases; in 3 of them the secondary cases occurred before removal, and at or near the same time as the primary case; in 4 the secondary cases occurred after separation from the primary case, and from the dwelling; and in 3 onl}^ did the secondary cases occur among the household after its removal from the premises, after the latter had been disinfected, and after the household had returned to them. In this small minority of 3 dwellings out of 286, then, there Avas prima facie evidence of place-infection; and the whole of that inquiry went to show that the epidemic Avas associated AAdth place in some sense or another. But this localisation of the infection Avas considered to have consisted merely in the casual pr.;sence of plague-rats; and it Avas pointed out that infectiveness of some of the premises standing on an area otherwise knowm to be infective was just Avhat might b(! expected to continue notwithstanding disinfection if it depended on the incoming of infected rats, and not on infection resident in the place itself, f 38. Further, 2zl premises (whether dwellings or places of employment) were adjudged in 1900 to have been places at which 255 cases had received their infection (see Diagram C, 1900). 39. Report 1901, par. 221, f Report, Sydney, 1900, p. 38.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21354704_0126.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
