Enclosure 20th June, 1894-
for your information a cutting from the "China Mail", headed, Discovery of the Plague Bacillus, interview with Professor Kitasato.
I have the honour to be,
My Lord Marquess, Your Lordship's Most Obedient
Humble Servant,
William Robinson
The China Mail.
Enclosure No.
HONGKONG, WEDNESDAY, June 20, 1894.
DISCOVERY OF THE PLAGUE BACILLUS.
INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR KITASATO. It has been known for some time that two Japanese gentlemen, experts with regard to infectious diseases, have made a special study of the local outbreak of Asiatic typhus. It was a wise measure of the Japanese Government to send these scientists here, but the results of their investigations will concern and, we trust, eventually benefit this Colony as much as Japan. One of these gentlemen, Professor Kitasato, after passing through the usual course of medical studies at the Tokyo University and taking his M.D. degree, spent seven years, from 1885 to 1892, at Dr Koch's institute in Berlin, where he devoted all his time to the study of the bacteriology of infectious diseases. After successfully passing the medical professorate examinations in Berlin, he returned to Japan, and established there, connected with the Government, an institution similar to that of Dr Koch for the biological investigation of the infectious diseases of Japan. The other gentleman, Professor Aoyama, is a medical graduate of the Tokyo University, where, after spending four years in Berlin in the study of pathology, from 1883 to 1887, he has since been lecturing as Professor of Medicine. Both gentlemen have now, for some time past, been taking every opportunity on board the Hygeia and in the different hospitals, studying the disease in all its stages and making sundry experiments. Professor Aoyama pays special attention to the Morphology and Dr Kitasato to the Biology of the disease. The results of their observations are now being embodied for the information of the Japanese Government, in a joint official report, which is in process of elaboration. A local gentleman has been favoured, in the course of an interview, with a brief outline of what will probably be the leading features of this interesting document.
The two specialists, it would seem, agree in identifying the plague now raging in Hongkong with that bubonic plague which devastated Europe first in the sixth century (when it was imported from the Levant); and ever since made its appearance here and there, being historically best known in connection with the Great Plague which decimated London in the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. They have further identified it, to a limited extent, with the sporadic outburst of plague which occurred in Astrakhan from 1878 to 1879, when a small shining bacillus was found in the blood of human patients. But as Biology was then in its infancy, and the instruments now available were then hardly known, great importance can be attached to the description then given of the specific plague bacillus. Again, the two experts have identified the Hongkong plague with that bubonic typhus which Professor Hirsch of Berlin, in his 'Topography of Diseases,' states to be endemic in the Chinese province of Yunnan. Professor Hirsch's account of the Yunnan plague, they say, stands confirmed by observations made by some medical missionaries at Meng-tze, a district city in Liu-an Fu (Yun-nan) situated under Lat. 23° 34′ and Long. 118° 08′, and more recently by Dr Border of Pak-hoi, one of the ports open to foreign trade, in the province of Kwang-tung, near Lien-chow Fu, under Lat. 21° 39' and Long. 108° 59'. From the pathological description which the two gentlemen gave of a typical case of plague, as observed in Hongkong, it would seem that the period of incubation generally lasts from two to seven days, followed by prostration and high fever, starting from forty degrees Celsius, and concluding with delirium and coma. But protracted cases are generally accompanied by the development of bubos, boils or petechiæ, convalescence setting in about the sixth day. As regards the Biology of the disease, Professor Kitasato considers himself to have been fortunate enough to have discovered the specific bacillus of the local form of plague, and his confrère, Professor Aoyama, agrees with him in describing this specific plague-bacillus as being what is called in German a 'stäbchen' bacterium, having the form of very slender straight filaments of short length. This bacillus, found in the blood of plague patients from the second day of the outbreak of the disease, and devastating the principal internal organs, has been indisputably identified, as the real agent of the mischief, by Dr Kitasato.
His colleague, Professor Aoyama, agrees with him in stating that, unless the bacillus discovered at Astrakhan but imperfectly described was the same species, no such bacillus has hitherto been found in human blood. The only kinds of known bacilli, which to a limited extent may be compared with this plague-bacillus are two classes of bacteria hitherto found in animals only, viz., the 'Milz-brand' bacterium (bacillus anthracis) which morphologically resembles the plague-bacillus about as much as the 'Hühner-cholera' bacterium (found in poultry diseases) resembles it biologically. Experiments made by Dr. Kitasato breeding and multiplying the specific plague bacilli discovered in Hongkong, and in inoculating different animals with the preparation of the virus thus obtained, have invariably produced within two days the death of these animals under symptoms conclusively exhibiting the symptoms of plague, though the symptoms of vomiting, diarrhœa, and buboes were absent owing to the rapid development of the disease.
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