Report of the Board of Health on a second outbreak of plague at Sydney, 1902 / by J. Ashburton Thompson.

  • Thompson, J. Ashburton (John Ashburton), 1848-1915.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Board of Health on a second outbreak of plague at Sydney, 1902 / by J. Ashburton Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    case of plague occurred among tlie persons inhabiting these premises, nor among any casually connected with them as far as could be learned. No note was made as to the source at which horse-feed was procured; this may have been Jones’ store, which was hut a little over a quarter of a mile away. 85. Laboratory examination of rats continued in a manner which will he summarised and commented upon at a convenient place in this description, without revealing any others infected with plague, until the next case in man had occurred about five weeks later. Case 2.— J.E.D., m., aged 37 ; had been inoculated at Rockhampton, Queensland, early in 1900 (see par. 28) ; married, four children, lie was suddenly attacked on December 8, during the forenoon, with a sharp pain in the left groin, where femoral and inguinal glandular swellings subsequently developed. He lay ill at his residence in Spring-street, Waverley,about 3 miles away from his place of business and the other places hitherto mentioned, under private care unt.l December 10, when his case was notified. The diagnosis was at once mado from clinical signs; subsequently morphological, cultural, and inoculation tests all yielded positive results. His condition at the time of discovery forbade removal, and he died December 11 after an illness which had lasted sixty-five hours. 8G. J.E.D. was a druggist’s assistant. lie had arrived from Rockhampton, Queensland, about two months before his death ; no case of plague had been notified at Rockhampton for 10 months before his departure (or on lltli October, 1901); his wife said she had received a one pound note from her brother at Rockhampton since her arrival at Sydney, but that deceased had known nothing of it and had not seen it; the case of plague which was notified at Rockhampton next after the one just men¬ tioned was ascribed to lltli February, 1903. IIis place of residence was in fair general order and repair; it stood in a suburb which has never yielded any other case, and it offered no traces at all of infestation with rats. The family of 6 persons, among whom no illness occurred, yyas entirely unacquainted with Case 1. lie was employed by a firm of wholesale druggists at their premises in the city of Sydney. The firm said that poison had been laid ever since Case 1 had become known, and that 72 carcases had been found and destroyed. A good many more, in advanced stages of putrefaction, were afterwards turned out in course of cleansing, hut no live rats were seen, and no evidence of plague was obtained. Such mortality from poison is quite unusual. There were here about 300 workmen, among whom no illness occurred. But D., regularly employed during the day at this establishment, was also employed in the evening by a benefit society, and on this duty he went to the dispensary, which stood in Castlereagh-street, at a point not more than 11 chains distant from Exton’s store (Case 1). On examination the dispensary was found to he very well constructed, clean, and free from evidence of infestation with rats; and none of the subsequent cases of plague were traced to connection with it. Evidence of Diffusion of the Infection. 87. The rat-search continued without revealing any plague-infection until after a further interval of thirty-five days. The third and fourth cases in man happened on January 10 or 11 and on January 12. The former was the first of a sub-epidemic which occurred on what has already been referred to as the Paddington area ; the latter was found in the immediate neighbourhood of the dispensary building mentioned in connection with Case 2, and consequently on the South-central area. Cases 3 and 4, therefore, furnished the first clear evidence that the infection had become diffused. The sub-epidemic which followed on Case 3 afforded an unusually distinct (but far from solitary) example of transport of the infection over a considerable tract which either entirely escaped, or suffered only in part at a much later date and, plainly enough, from infection otherwise communicated to it; and I interrupt the account of the South-central area to describe it here, because it was altogether confined to a remote and circumscribed area, and furnishes a most useful type of the course of the epidemic as a whole. The