272 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVI. 



oil to the camels' feet during the Egyptian campaign escaped the plague 

 (l7 >. Mr. Jackson states that the coolies employed in the oil stores 

 of Tunis smear themselves with oil, and are rarely affected with plague 

 when it rages in that city ( 18 ). It is also stated by Luigi of Pavia 

 that during the 27 years he was attendant at the pest house in Smyrna, 

 he found friction with oil more efficacious than any other medicine both 

 as a prophylactic and as a means of cure (1S) . In the plague 

 epidemic in India in 1815 and 1819 Mr. White, talking of the common 

 practice in many parts of India — friction to the body with oil, says 

 " This (practice) has, upon very good authority and extensive experience, 

 been supposed a complete preventive, as well as a powerful agent in 

 the cure of plague " ( 20 ). Mr. McAdam says : " Another remark 

 which the natives make, and which I think is likely to be just, as. 

 they are not apt to take notice of anything that is not extremely 

 obvious, is, that those engaged in the expression of oil are not liable to 

 infection " < 2X >. Can the relative immunity of Calcutta and Madras 

 compared with Bombay and the Punjab be due to the habit of 

 daily anointing the body with oil in the former two presidencies ? I 

 was very much struck by this habit in Sambalpur, where recently 

 I was Civil Surgeon ; the people in this district follow partly the habits 

 of the people of Calcutta and partly those of Madras. I was informed 

 that the Jubbulpore Municipality placed it on record during a very 

 severe epidemic two years ago that tobacconists who lived in their 

 shops were peculiarly exempt from the disease. 



It is notorious how frequently visits at night to plague-infected houses 

 have been followed by fatal results while the same houses could be 

 entered with impunity by day. In this connection the following 

 quotation from the report of Dr. Watson on the Mahamari (plague) 

 of Kumaon is of interest ( 22 > : " The experience of Dr. Eenny, Dr. 

 Pearson, Dr. Francis and others has proved that a medical officer can 

 without danger feel the pulse of a plague patient and give him medicine, 

 and also that medical officers can without danger examine by dissection 

 the body of a man who has died of plague. That is to say, he can 

 do these things by day, with the sun shining and the air tolerably warm. 

 I do not believe he could do any of them with impunity after night- 

 fall. " Take these facts in conjunction with the observations I have- 

 made that Pulex cheopis shuns the light, and the facts which I com- 

 municated to you in the paper which I read before you last year. I 



