38 ORIENTAL PLAGUE chap. 



times of pandemics such as we have had now for several 

 years, cases simulating indigenous cases of plague may 

 occur which are clinically indistinguishable from real 

 plague, but on bacteriological analysis turn out not to 

 be plague ; wherefore the bacteriological analysis of such 

 cases is obviously of the first importance. 



During the last nine or ten years I have analysed for 

 the medical department of the Local Government Board 

 materials derived from a good many ports and also from 

 inland places in considerable numbers. These materials 

 were taken from cases — man or rat — which were either 

 prima facie, i.e. epidemiologically, probably cases of 

 plague, or which might have been plague both on clinical 

 and on epidemiological grounds. Without wishing to 

 give the details of these analyses I will restrict myself to 

 giving a few instances of different categories only, in 

 order to show on what lines these analyses were carried 

 out : — 



1. The s.s. Simla. 1 — " The Simla is a hospital ship, which had been 

 conveying invalids from South Africa to Southampton. This vessel 

 arrived at the latter port on March 13th, 1901, having touched at 

 Plymouth on March 12 th, where she had been given pratique by 

 the Customs after all the usual questions had been satisfactorily 

 answered. A case of enteric fever was landed at Plymouth and 

 another at Southampton. It appears that two days after leaving 

 Cape Town a Lascar member of the crew came under the ship's 

 surgeon's care with a bubo in the groin. Though a natural suspicion 

 of plague arose at once the idea was dismissed, and when the ship 

 was boarded at Plymouth, and again at Southampton, and the usual 

 questions were put as to plague, cholera, etc., no mention of this case 

 was made in their replies by the master or the surgeon of the ship. 

 On landing, the Lascar obtained admission to the South Hants 

 Hospital for treatment of a large abscess pointing in his groin. 

 Some time prior to this Dr. Wellesley Harris, the port medical 



1 Dr. R. Bruce Low's Report and Palters on Bubonic Plague, p. 18. 



