4900.
MEMORANDUM
ON THE
INFLUENCE OF RATS IN THE DISSEMINA- TION OF PLAGUE.
277
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O.885
7
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
1. The destruction of the rat as a powerful means of prevent- Introduc- ing plague in a country threatened with plague, or as a means of tion. lessening the extent of the spread of the disease, may be claimed as a new practice recommended on the basis of what is now known concerning the important rôle which the rat, and to a less degree the mouse, plays in the propagation of plague. This knowledge is not altogether new though it has had to be acquired afresh, having been forgotten in the long interval which has elapsed since the last great epidemics of plague. In its fresh acquisition in recent epidemies much more has been learnt than was previously known, and the new information is of the highest practical importance.
2. The Philistines, or ancient Phoenicians, recognised a relation- Recognition ship between mice and plague, for, when their towns were of the attacked by the disease, it is recorded that they made propitiatory connection offerings to their gods of images of their buboes, and of the by the mice that marred the land. The inhabitants of Hindustan were and Hindus. Phoenicians
at one time familiar with the connection between rat mortality and plague, for in some of their Purans, written more than 800 years ago, they are instructed to leave their dwellings immediately they notice a mortality among rats. The inhabit- Recognition ants of the Ghurwal and Kamaon regions on the Himalayas, by the where plague is endemic, put this advice into practice at the inhabitants present time whenever plague breaks out among them. They in endemic know well the meaning of an unusual mortality among rats, and areas of on this becoming noticeable they leave the village and betake Ghurwal and
plague- themselves to the hills. Drs. Planck, Francis, Pearson, Kandaon in Hutcheson, and Thompson, in their investigation into plaguę, India. or Maha-mari as it is called by the natives of these districts, refer to the mortality of the rats, which they point out as preceding the outbreak of plague among the inhabitants., Dr. Francis says,
"A remarkable feature in connection with un 5195-5000-3/1900 G 145 Wt 81148 D&
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