Reports and papers on suspected cases of human plague in East Suffolk and on an epizootic of plague in rodents.

  • Great Britain. Local Government Board.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Reports and papers on suspected cases of human plague in East Suffolk and on an epizootic of plague in rodents. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    23/108 (page 11)
    tile view that, iu so far as Shotley was coucerned, there had been any undue mortality either amongst rats or hares. But the balance of all the evidence clearly indicates in my view' that, at any rate in certain localities in the Samford rural district, rats were dying in the autumn of 1910 in quite unusual numbers, and evidence of the same nature and equally clear is forthcoming from the Woodbridge rural district and from the Felixstowe urban district, both on the opposite side of the Orw^ell estuary. The Bacteriological Evidence of Blague amongst Rodents. It wnis some days before I was able to secure samples of dead rodents for bacteriological examination, but on October 8th Mr. Jervis, of Freston House, despatched to Dr. Klein a rat which had been found recently dead in Freston Wood {see Gr on map). Mr. Jervis added, in his letter, that there were many pheasants in the wood and tliat certainly no poison had been laid dowm near that spot. The evidence furnished by Dr. Klein as regards post-mortem, microscopical, and cultural appearances, as w^ell as the results of inoculation experiments, sliow'ed conclusively tliat tlie rat had died of plague. On the same date Dr. SleigJi forwarded a hare whicli had been found dead in the “ \\ ilderness ” (.see 11 on ma])), which is nearly two miles distant from Freston Wood, and this also, as has been said, was pronounced by Dr. Klein to be plague infected. Subsequently other rodents, mainly rats, were despatched from different parts of the Samford peninsula, and it became gradually manifest that a large number of the parishes in the district con- tained plague-infected rats. Professor Simpson also informed me on October 29th that a cat which had died at Stuttnn Kectory, and which was examined by him, was found to be infected, while a rat and ferret sent to him at my request by Mr. Jervis from Freston were also pronounced by Professor Simiison to have died of the same disease. It w-as at first thought that the epizootic was confined to the Samford district in which the cases of human plague had occurred, but, as has been already observed, subsequent investi- gations led to reports of undue rat mortality in the Woodbridge rural district and iu the Felixstowe urban district, and, later, both of these areas yielded plague-infected rats as also did the Woodbridge urban district and the outskirts of Ipswich borough. Shortly afterwards a hare found dead at Mistley (.vgg map) in the Tendring rural district of Essex as well as another at Edwardstone (not shown on map) iu the Cosford rural district iu AVest Suffolk and some 15 miles west of ipswdeh, i>roved plague infected. In the first instance the bacteriological investigations w'ere confined almost exclusively to rats which had been found dead under suspicious circumstances, and, while this w'as the case, the proportion of infected to non-infected rats was con- siderable. When, however, the undue mortality amongst the lats iu the Samford and AA^oodbridge Dnions ceased, and when