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.

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    It is obvious to anyone visiting' the Ipswich docks and smaller ports, such as Felixstowe, AVoodhridge, and Mistley, that rats can without any very great difficulty obtain access from ship or barg'e to sliore or vice versa. Doubtless were any of the ])laces from which tlie vessels or barges come known to be rat-j)lag'iie infected, such j)i'ecau- tions as are available for ])reventing' access of I'ats to or from the vessels or barges would be taken, but ])rolonged experience raises serious question whether such precautions are wholly effectual. The presence of infected hares in localities possibly tar removed from the rat-infected areas is not difficult to explain, since it is not improbable that these animals may traverse considerable distances even in a single day, and it may be added, with respect to the plague-infected hare at Edwardstone, in the Cosford rural district, that grain-laden barges occasionally go up the Diver Stour as far as Bures, which is only some five miles from Edw'ard- stone. It has, too, to be borne in mind that grain-laden harges pass up the several estuaries to considerable distances inland, and it is only necessary to study the accompanying maps carefully to understand the manner in which it is j)0ssible that plague infec- tion might be introduced at several separate points. Dr. Sleigh, the medical officer of health of the Samford rural district, draws attention in his paper, to which reference has been made, to the circumstance that the Shotley group of cases (dealt with in detail later) occurred at a s])ot immediately opj)Osite the anchorage of the large grain-laden boats in Butterman’s Bay, and he expresses the opinion that it would be an easy matter for rats from these vessels to swim ashore at this i)oint.* The records of rat migration certainly lend support to the possibility of such a short swim. It is clearly not possible with the evidence available to deter- mine at what ijoint the epizootic was introduced, or to form any conclusion as to the direction in which the disease amongst the rodents travelled. The groiips of human illness are too few and, as it were, too accidental to furnish safe ground for inferences. If, as some believe, the rat disease was introduced into Shotley via Butterman’s Bay, and if, moreover, this was the only intro- duction, then unless infected rats swam the Orwell either from a ® Lydekker in “ Royal Natural History,” observes that—Rats impelled by scarcity of food at times make emigrations in large bodies, generally during the night ; and on such occasions they will not hesitate to plunge boldly into or swim over such rivers as may come in their w'ay. Some years ago the rats that frequented the London Zoological Gardens were in the habit of regularly swimming to and fro across the Regent’s Canal. It is also narrated by Zuschlag that two fishermen who had witnessed the occurrence, stated that during a night in the autumn of 1847, while they were fishing in the Limfjord, a broad channel in Jutland, their boats were surrounded by immense swarms of rats making for the Peninsula of Sky. Shortly after- wards the whole peninsula was overrun by the brown rat, the black rat having been exterminated. Boelter states that in the Faroe Islands the brown rat is ubiquitous, and that the rats may frequently be seen swimming en masse across the strait dividing the islands of the Archipelago.