On the present methods of combating the plague / by W.M. Haffkine.

  • Waldemar Haffkine
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the present methods of combating the plague / by W.M. Haffkine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    of the permanent attendants in plague hospitals have taken the disease. Pneumonic cases alone have proved dangerous in this respect. The observations above quoted warrant, I believe, the following pro- positions, now more or less generally recognised, viz., that (1) plague is what has been termed, in a general sense, a disease of locality; (2) that it is contracted principally at night; and (3) that the part which man plays as direct agent in its propagation is a more or less subordinate one. This being so, the measures taken with regard to man, even when carried to perfection, can influence the propagation of plague only to the same proportionately limited extent. In the vast majority of cases events have conformed with this conclusion, in that precautions taken against the importation or the spread of plague by man have failed to secure the desired end. It must, however, be stated that these precautions can rarely, if ever, be carried to perfection. Their application is fraught with great difficulties, and is often impracticable. This is due to the impos- sibility of enlisting the self-sacrificing co-operation of individuals, to the first cases being rarely recognised, to the reluctance of those falling ill to deliver themselves into the hands of strangers and officials, to the measures of prevention hurting trade and numerous private interests, and to the consequent wholesale evasion of prescribed rules. The time, therefore, arrives when the measures directed against man are relaxed or dropped, and efforts are chiefly applied to inanimate objects. II. This part of the programme seems lighter of accomplishment. The list of measures, within an area infected, comprises, in this case, destruction or disinfection of houses, furniture, clothing, bedding, carriages, goods, warehouses, grain and other stores, garbage, drains and streets. Outside the infected area the measures consist in the refusal to admit carts, trains and ships with goods from infected places ; or in the refusal to admit only certain goods ; or in mere inspection of trains, carts and ships, and some procedure by which these, and the goods they convey, as well as the belongings of travellers, are sought to be rendered harmless. All these measures are intended for the avoidance or destruction of plague germs which may possibly exist in the objects concerned. Plague bacilli have, however, been very carefully looked for, but so far have not been discovered in the earth, on the walls or floors of houses, or on any inanimate object, unless they were quite obviously and recently soiled by the products of a plague patient. I am not, moreover, aware of a single instance in which the extension of this disease
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