180 OMENTAL PLAGUE chap. 



pestis, and that these materials on inoculation promptly 

 produce plague. Likewise it appears that plague bacilli 

 are abundant in the Malpighian corpuscles (glomeruli and 

 capsules) and in the uriniferous tubules. 1 These facts in 

 no way support a contention such as that put forward by 

 Hankin in the Journal of Hygiene, to the effect that the 

 intestinal or renal discharges of the plague rat are not to 

 be regarded as materials capable of causing infection. On 

 the contrary, the observations I have recorded go to 

 justify a contention that, as regards rats which have 

 contracted plague by feeding, the dejecta in question, 

 teeming as they needs must with B. pestis, are to be 

 regarded as in all probability infective. Indeed, in 

 view of the ready transmission of plague to the rat by 

 means of feeding with infected grain, rice, flour, and the 

 like, the foregoing experiments afford strong suggestion 

 that the excreta of a plague rat becoming mixed and dried 

 along with food-stuffs may be the starting of extensive 

 plague infection of the rats feeding on these substances 

 contaminated by stale plague dejecta. 



In connection with the above propositions, it has to 

 be borne in mind that the anatomical lesions in the ileum 

 which I have described cannot be of a single day's dura- 

 tion ; that the necrotic changes in the mucous membrane 

 and in Peyer's glands caused by the multiplication of 

 B. pestis within the cavity of the ileum must have occu- 

 pied time in development, and that accordingly there 



1 As a matter of fact I have made a number of experiments (which need not be 

 described in detail) in which the sanguineous mucus of the inflamed intestine of 

 animals (rat and guinea-pig) dead of plague after inoculation was used for 

 cutaneous as also subcutaneous injection, and by which fatal plague of the 

 animals so inoculated (guinea-pigs and rats) was the result. I have also made 

 inoculation experiments (subcutaneous) of guinea-pigs, employing the urine drawn 

 from the bladder of guinea-pigs or of rats which had succumbed to (hemorrhagic) 

 plague, and the result was positive in the majority of instances. 



