1 %(\ • • • ground squirrels may act as a host for the Bacillus pestis 

 in the interim between the more noticeable outbreaks in rats 

 and men ... a human having acquired infection during 

 squirrel hunting might reintroduce the infection among rats 

 either in the form of plague-infested squirrel fleas, or by him- 

 self, being then the source of infestation for human fleas. The 

 human flea has been found, sometimes in considerable num- 

 bers, on rats on both sides of the bay. 



Anxious to gain from his new finding more practical help, 

 he related the story of the death of an Oakland sewer worker 

 on the fourth day of a "typhoid-pneumonia." Surgeon Long 

 had been suspicious, and in spite of the threats of a mob, had 

 personally performed necropsy, proved it to be plague, with 

 confirmatory bacteriological diagnosis by Wherry. Members 

 of Oakland's council, faced with these facts, had declared it a 

 "manufactured case," designed to influence them. "It was no 

 fault of the town council that subsequent infection of rats did 

 not occur," Wherry said. They had gotten off so happily 

 because: "Owing to the great sanitary clean-up, human fleas 

 were scarcer in the bay region than they had ever been as far 

 back as native sons could recollect." 



To this aspersive dig a footnote in Wherry's article is added 

 in evidence merely of the fairyland in which he ever lived: 



The following will illustrate very well how a flea population 

 may once again come into its own in a locality where active 

 sanitary measures are frowned upon. Recently a rat with acute 

 septicemic plague was caught in the basement of a vacant 

 dwelling-house right in the center of Oakland. The house 

 faced the street ; it had a vacant building on one side, a Japa- 

 nese market on the other, and these were surrounded by 

 perfectly filthy shacks occupied by Chinese. The basement was 

 riddled by rat runways and rat droppings could be detected 

 on the first and second floors. It was so heavily infested with 

 fleas that the dust upon the floors could be seen to pulsate with 

 their movements. Four sheets of fly paper were placed on the 

 floor of the basement for one minute and then removed. One 

 of these sheets was speckled with 190 fleas. Another sheet 

 caught 115 fleas ; a third about 9 5 fleas, and the fourth about 

 75 fleas. The legs of the man [this was Wherry himself! ] enter- 



