1901] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. _—_38 
Kong in 1894 the death-rate was 93.4 per cent for Chinese; 
77 per cent for Indians ; 60 per cent for Japanese; 100 
per cent for Eurasians, and 18.2 per cent for Europeans. 
It affects both men and animals, and is characterized by 
sudden onset, high fever, prostration, delirium, and the 
occurrence of lymphatic swellings—buboes—affecting — 
chiefly the inguinal glands, though not infrequently the 
axillary, and sometimes the cervical, glands. Death comes 
on in severe cases in forty-eight hours. If the case is of 
longer duration, the prognosis is said to be better. Au- 
topsy in fatal cases reveals the characteristic enlarge- 
ment of the lymphatic glands, whose contents are soft 
and sometimes purulent. Wyman in his very instructive 
pamphlet, ‘The Bubonic Plague,” finds it convenient to 
- divide plague into (a) bubonic or ganglionic; (b) septi- 
cemic; and (c) pneumonic forms. Of these the bubonic 
form is most frequent and the pneumonic form most fatal. 
The infection usually takes place through some peripher- 
al lesion, but may occur by inhalation of the specific or- 
ganisms. The bacillus of bubonic plague seéms to have 
met an independent discovery at the hands of Yersin and 
Kitasato in the summer of 1894, during the activity of 
the plague then raging at Hong Kong. There seems to 
be but little doubt that the micro-organisms described by 
the two observers are identical. The bacillus is short and 
thick—a eocco-bacillus, as some call it—with round ends. 
Its size is small (2 mm. in length) and its form is subject 
to considerable variation, It not infrequently occurs in 
chains of four or six or even more, and is occasionally en- 
capsulated. It shows active Brownian movement, which 
probably led Kitasato to consider it motile, while Yer- 
sin did not. | 
Gordon found that some, at least, of these plague ba- 
cilli have flagella. It is an wrobic organism. No spores 
are formed. It stains well by the usual method ; not by 
Grams method. When stained the organism appears dark- 
