Plague / Its Cause and the Manner of its Extension, Its Menace, Its Control and Suppression, Its Diagnosis and Treatment

by Thomas Wright Jackson

[CHAPTER III
ITS CONTROL AND SUPPRESSION]

Plague Prevention.—At present the most promising and the most rationally based phase of plague control is that of prevention. The reason for this is plainly apparent. If the facts in the case are as stated and if the conclusions of the Plague Commissioners and students of epidemiology the world over are correct, to eradicate plague we need only to control its carriers.

To exterminate the rat (and perhaps the marmot and ground squirrel), to prevent the transportation of rats or of infected rat fleas in ships, trains, clothing, merchandise and upon the bodies of men and animals from the numerous foci or plague centres of the world to non-infected localities, is a beautiful plan indeed.

Restricted to single communities, even where the intelligence, patriotism, effort and wealth of the whole people are enlisted, the undertaking is formidable, with obstacles to its execution, and discouragement must often be expected. Extended in its application to the whole plague-infected world it becomes an undertaking seemingly impossible of accomplishment.

Yet we are encouraged to face the situation by a glance at what has been accomplished. The United States, perhaps, presents the highest examples of achievement in the cases of San Francisco and Manila. The work in San Francisco is too recent and has been too well published to require detailed review here. A successful campaign against rats in 1907 practically terminated an epidemic of considerable proportions well within a year. Behind this movement, however, were the powerful machinery of the Federal Government, money in generous amount and a considerably aroused public, resentful of the mismanagement of the 1903 epidemic, whereby, through pure fear of financial loss to commercial interests and by a disgraceful suppression of the truth, California was made, permanently perhaps, one of the world's plague centres.

It has been estimated that the rat population of the world is equal to the human population, and this estimate does not appear to be unreasonable when one considers as indices the destruction of the rodents in cities by the hundreds of thousands, upon single farms by the thousand, and the wonderful procreative powers of the rat.

Economic Importance of Rat Destruction.—It is certain that the economic importance of rat destruction upon grounds other than those purely sanitary must be impressed upon the public wherever a rat campaign is to be carried on.

The absolute inutility of the rat, its enormous destructiveness to crops, to merchandise in warehouses and in transit, to poultry, eggs, fruits and vegetables, to buildings and furniture, and its incendiary habits causing annual fire losses of considerable magnitude, must be emphasized in season and out of season. Such items as the value of the grain consumed by a single rat per year, as estimated by the experts of the Agricultural Department, are convincing arguments in the case. At a daily consumption of two ounces, the ration for a full-grown rat, this grain value varies from sixty cents per year, for wheat, to two dollars per year, for oatmeal, for each rat subsisted. Similar data in great variety, relating to direct and indirect losses, are available for the purpose of making impressive the economic need for rat destruction.

Accumulated experience from various countries and cities shows plainly that there is no single method of rat destruction to be depended upon to the exclusion of all others and it also shows that without governmental direction and supervision, backed by ample authority and the ability and willingness to expend considerable money, neither single nor combined methods will be successful. Moreover in the countries where special effort is most needed there is often distrust on the part of the natives, religious prejudice against the destruction of animal life and frequently open opposition to the authorities in their efforts to destroy rats. The same superstitions and religious beliefs which prevent the killing of venomous snakes in India, at the annual cost of thousands of human lives, operate against most measures of rat destruction proposed by the Government.

Extermination Methods.—The plans and weapons of warfare against rats include the use of poisons; traps; starvation; rat-proof construction of buildings, wharves, bakeries, stables, granaries, etc.; the introduction of diseases among the rat population by bacterial viruses and the conservation of the natural enemies of the rat, such as the cat, the dog, the ferret, the mongoose, and certain wild animals and birds of the woods and fields.