59 o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and subsequently confessed had belonged to a person who had died 

 of the plague in Alexandria. The two Moorish officials who 

 opened the boxes were attacked with the plague that night and 

 died in a few hours. The disease spread rapidly throughout Mo- 

 rocco, carrying off eighty per cent of those who were attacked." 



I mention these facts in order to emphasize the desirability of 

 disinfecting all articles liable to carry the infection coming from 

 infected places. 



Professor Haffkine's preventive inoculation against the plague 

 is still being largely employed in India. This consists in injecting 

 hypodermically sterilized cultures of the bacillus. No curative 

 action is claimed for this treatment, but it is believed to be pro- 

 tective against the disease. It is stated that more than eighty thou- 

 sand people in India have undergone this form of vaccination, and 

 that the death rate among these has been exceedingly low. How- 

 ever, it is well to be careful in accepting statistical statements on 

 a matter of this nature. In the first place, it is probable that only 

 the more intelligent will submit to vaccination, and these will also 

 employ other means of protecting themselves against the disease. 

 In the second place, there are many thousands of people exposed to 

 the infection, or at least live in infected districts, who have never 

 been vaccinated and who do not acquire the disease. 



Three kinds of serum have been used as curative agents in the 

 plague. In 1896 M. Yersin began the use of a specially prepared 

 serum in China. The first cases treated with this preparation did 

 unusually well, and it was hoped that most valuable results would 

 follow from its more extended use. This serum is prepared after 

 the manner of the antitoxine used in the treatment of diphtheria. 

 That used most largely in India is made at the Imperial Institute 

 of Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg. Numerous physi- 

 cians in India have reported upon the action of this serum, and 

 none of them favorably. Very recently Dr. Clemow treated fifty 

 cases with this serum, and compared them with fifty other cases 

 treated without the serum. Every other case was selected for the 

 serum treatment. The mortality was exactly the same in each 

 group, forty patients out of fifty dying. 



The second serum is that prepared by M. Roux, of the Pasteur 

 Institute in Paris. This is practically the same as the preparation 

 made by M. Yersin, and the results obtained are equally unsatis- 

 factory. In 1897 the writer had the privilege of observing, both 

 at Paris and at St. Petersburg, the preparation of these agents, from 

 which at that time great results were expected. A third prepara- 

 tion is made by Professor Lustig, of Florence. I have been unable, 

 so far, to find any detailed account of the method followed by Pro- 



