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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    which rendered it unfit for habitation, so that soon afterwards it was pulled down with consent of the owner. It was very badly infested with rats; the patient’s husband said he had removed 3 carcases from his bedroom on 6th March, hut also that he had previously laid poison ; on raising the floors abundant traces of present infestation were found, and 3 more putrid carcases were removed from under the bedroom floor. On one side of this cottage was a house which had a stable attached to it. 138. In consequence of occurrence of Case 61a block which was bounded by George-street, Clmrch-strcet, Burton-street, and Missenden-road* was taken in hand by the cleansing staff on 25th March (finished 7th April), which included a produce store at the corner of Missenden-road and George-street. Prior to this the neighbourhood had begun to be searched by the rat staff, but nothing of importance had resulted, except that rats were found in considerable numbers at the produce store just referred to—17 having been caught there by it on the night of 25th March. 139. After a rather long interval, namely, on 21st April, one plague-rat, and on 23rd April, 3 plague-rats, were brought in from the store (search of these particular premises having been intermitted of course, and probably resumed merely because it was a good place at which to catch rats), whereupon the place was closed for cleansing and reconstruction. It included no living apartments ; its proprietor occupied a house erected on a low bank at the back of it, entirely detached, and reached by a flight of uncovered wooden steps. Here his wife (Case 127) was attacked with plague on 13th May; she exhibited a right axillary bubo, and recovered. No further carcases were found at the dwelling, which was reported to have been in good order and repair; the store had continued closed from about 25tli April, cementing of rubble foundation-walls and concreting of the floor not having been completed until long after attack of Case 127. 140. This instance presents several points which deserve attention. In the first place the neighbourhood was remote from other infected spots, and doubtless received its infection per saltum; in that case there is a reasonable presumption, raised by experience on other remote areas already recounted, that it was trans¬ ported there with supplies delivered at the produce store. Now the owner of the stable next to the house at which Case 61 lay procured his feed from this store. But the dates do not nearly agree. Case 61 was attacked 38 days before a plague rat was found at the produce store, and as far as this point furnishes a hint it suggests that the infection was really travelling the other way—that is to say, easterly from Case 61 towards the produce store, and not westerly from the store to Case 61. 141. Attention is thus drawn to Case 20, which lay still further west of the produce store than Case 61, and to the statement which has been made that the infec¬ tion is commonly introduced to a clean neighbourhood by man and communicated from him to the rats.*' Evidently, from the pathology of plague, this might happen, although reason has never appeared in our experience for suspecting it; and the present instance seems to me not to be one which suggests that sequence of events. Eor, on those same pathological grounds, a case of bubonic plague of an unusually mild description (the patient was discharged from hospital on the twenty-third day of illness) cannot be supposed capable of diffusing infectious matters during the first 40 hours after the onset, within which term this patient was removed to hospital; his cottage, it will be remembered, having been disinfected immediately afterwards, and finished within less than 72 hours of his first symptoms There is thus every reason for regarding Case 20 as independent altogether of the two subsequent cases and of the plague-rats afterwards found, and as having been merely one of those imported cases of which so many were met with during the former (as well as during this) epidemic, and from which no communication of the disease either from man to rats or from man to man ever took pi ice. 142. How did Case 61 come to be infected from the produce store since plague-rats were not found at it until 38 days later ? There is, indeed, no more than a suggestion that the infection was received thence; and the possibility must be * See for instance Memorandum on the Influence of Rats in the dissemination of Plague, by W. J. Simpson, M.D., printed for use of the Colonial Office, May, 19C0. “ Man as a rule is the chief importer of plague into a locality, while the rat at the commencement is the chief disseminator.”