Very respectfully,
[Signed] Victor G. Heiser,
Director of Health.
Upon November 26, 1912, five dead rats were reported from the U. S. Army Commissary Warehouses on the Pasig River near the Malecon. They were found dead by workmen there and were thrown into the river by the finders and thus, unfortunately, examination for plague was prevented.
Upon November 27, a cat, known to have caught and eaten rats recently at the same place, was reported to be sick. I took the cat to the Bureau of Science where she was observed until she died, three days later.
At autopsy, typical bubonic plague (cervical) was disclosed, and several guinea-pigs inoculated from the spleen and bubo died from the same disease. A guinea-pig, inoculated from a swab introduced into the cat's rectum, also died from plague (see report of Dr. Schöbl).
Four kittens, recently born of this plague cat, were observed for two weeks but showed no sign of the disease.
Subsequently about 80 rats were caught at these warehouses and in the vicinity, but none of them showed post-mortem signs of plague. The Medical Department, U. S. Army, then took up the matter of rat catching on all military reservations in Manila and in all buildings thereon, but no more cases of animal plague were discovered.
Fleas and Their Habits.—In "Observations Upon the Bionomics of Fleas Bearing Upon the Epidemiology of Plague in Eastern Java," by N. H. Swellengrebel, Ph.D., published by the government at Batavia, Dutch India, in 1913, some interesting facts, developed by study and experimentation, are presented. Some of these facts have a bearing on the plague problem in the Philippines, for it should be borne in mind that certain climatic similarities and racial similarities pertain commonly to the Javanese and Filipinos and their respective countries.
While we are not prepared at present to make general application of the Javanese findings to the Philippine Islands, for lack of parallel or confirmatory studies in the Philippines, we may state some of the conclusions of the Java workers with propriety, and we may also point out similarities in the construction of certain Filipino and Javanese habitations in their relation to rat harboring.