Report on the outbreak of the plague at Sydney, 1900 / by the Chief Medical Officer of the Government and President of the Board of Health.

Thompson, J. Ashburton (John Ashburton), 1848-1915.

Date:: 1900

Credit: Report on the outbreak of the plague at Sydney, 1900 / by the Chief Medical Officer of the Government and President of the Board of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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$while tbey were at work on tlie area to be scavenged; these, though actually in contact with large numbers of people, cannot be reckoned as belonging to households. Pour cases and four households must be deducted, therefore ; and the statement then is, that 286 households yielded 299 cases (it is true, also, that several of the 299 had no fixed place of abode - but they had usually been in known contact subsequent to attack witli more or fewer persons among whom no illness occurred, so that it is not worth while to complicate this statement by exceptmg them). ]5ut a further deduction must be made of ten Chinese who occupied ten different dwellings, because too little (and that untrustworthy) could be learned concerning them. ISo the nett statement, which applies to whites only, is that it took 276 households to furnish 289 cases. This by itself is sufficient to show that direct communication of the infection from the sick to the well could have occurred but rarely, and even exceptionally. Among the cases just mentioned were some persons who, after receiving the infection at Sydney, travelled to more or less remote towns and there fell ill, from none of whom was there any extension of the disease. Particulars of these cases are given in the table below :— Table XT. No. of Case. -Shovv'iiig tlie number of persons who left Sydney and were attacked at distant places Avithin five days thereafter. Residence in Sydney. Left Sydney. Arrived at. On. Distance from Sydney. Was attacked. No. of Con- tacts. 115 127 154 166 264 Balmain Balmain Paddington Surry Hills Pitt-street, City Fireman, s.s. South Australian Fireman, s.s. Gera April 13 28 May 30 April 3 May 5 Goulburn Menangle Glenfield Ballina .. Mittagong Melbourne * Adelaide* ... April 13 „ 19 „ 23 „ 30 ]\Iay 30 April 7 May 10 134 m 41 „ 26 „ 331 „ 77 „ 576 „ 1,074 „ April 14 20 25 27 May 26 April 5 May 10 9 1 5 56 4 Reported from these ports, where the vessels were held in Quarantine. But it Avill already have been perceived that several other cases, Avhich are precisely similar to those in Table XI, excej)t in the comparative shortness of the distance to which they travelled from the centre, occurred within the metropolitan district (see Diagram A). These particulars, which have been cited as evidence that the disease never within our experience was set going by the arrival at uninfected places of persons who fell ill shortly after, introduce the second set of witnesses which consists of those who lived for a time in contact with others who had the disease. Attention is here dravm to the statement already made that although inoculation was offered to contacts it vras seldom accepted hj them ; to which it may now be added, that the total persons among the contacts (total 3,832) who were inoculated, either before being sent to isolation or on arrival there, was so small (180) that they may be left out of account in this connection. Eurther, it has already appeared from Table VII, that isolation followed very speedily on notification, and it may now be asked whether the contacts had remained in communication with the primary patient suffi- ciently long to contract the disease from him, if so it might be contracted. But the (duration of exposure to the infection wcis the interval which elapsed not between notification <$