CHAPTER IX
FLEAS AND PLAGUE
lague has always been one of the most dreaded diseases, and when we read of its ravages in the old world and the utter helplessness of the people before it we do not wonder that the very word filled them with horror. One of the greatest scourges ever known began in Egypt about A.D. 542, and spread along the shores of the Mediterranean to Europe and Asia. It lasted for sixty years, appearing again and again in the same place and decimating whole communities.
Another great pandemic, beginning in 1364, spread over the whole of the then known world and appeared in its most virulent form. On account of diffuse subcutaneous hemorrhages it came to be known as the "black death" and of course spread terror in all the communities where it appeared. Whole villages and districts were depopulated. The death-rate was very high, one authority placing the total mortality at twenty-five million.
During this time new centers of infection were established, and since then it has been carried by the commerce of the nations to all parts of the world. It is not restricted, as many other epidemic diseases, to the tropics or semi-tropics, although as a matter of fact we find it is more prevalent in these regions on account of the sanitary conditions.
HOW PLAGUE WAS CONTROLLED IN SAN FRANCISCO
Attention is called to these things in order that we may compare past conditions with present. During the last few years San Francisco has been fighting an outbreak of plague that in other days would have been nothing less than a national calamity. But with modern methods of handling it, based on knowing what it is, what causes it and how it is spread, the authorities there have been able not only to hold the disease in check, but practically to stamp it out with the loss of comparatively few lives.
Dr. Blue of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service and his co-workers directed their whole energy toward controlling the rats. A small army of men were employed, catching rats in every quarter of the city. Dr. Rucker reports that fully a million rats were slain in this campaign. Their breeding-places were destroyed by making cellars, woodsheds, warehouses, etc., rat-proof and removing all old rubbish. Garbage cans were installed in all parts of the city, as it was required that all garbage be stored where rats could not feed upon it, and altogether every effort was made to make it as uncomfortable as possible for the rats.