Biology and Medicine 457 



of t^je fly in spreading disease. Tlieir findings showed that 

 where the sewage was tliickest there tlie flies were most 

 •ibundant and further that tlie number of deaths from various 

 intestinal diseases corresponded very closely to the abundance 

 of flies from week to week. 



A similarly incidental role in the spread of the dread 

 bubonic plague has been traced to the rat and its boon 

 companion, the flea. While the plague is a native of the 

 East, its ravaging march has often extended over Europe and 

 it has even crossed the Pacific and visited our shores. 



The role of the rat in the spread of plague was suspected 

 by the ancients centuries before the Christian era. Samuel 

 tells us that in one of the numerous wars Ix'tween the Philis- 

 tines and the Israelites, the former made ofi' with tlie national 

 emblem of the Hebrews, the Ark of the Covenant; whereupon 

 as a sign of His displeasure the Lord visited upon the thieves 

 a scourge of plague. To assuage the wrath of tlie offended 

 Deity the priests of the Philistines told them to return the 

 stolen goods and to make a peace offering to the Lord of 

 "five golden images of the emerods (boils) in their secret 

 parts, and five golden images of the mice (rats?) that marred 

 the land." 1° 



The early Greeks recognized Apollo as the sender of the 

 plague and the mice (rats?) as his messengers. During the 

 reign of the Roman Emperor Severus a great epidemic of the 

 plague broke out in Asia ]Minor. A coin made at Pergamos 

 at this time shows on one side an image of the god of 

 medicine ^sculapius, with a dead rat at his feet and by his 

 side a naked human figure in an attitude of supplication. 



Since the days of Justinian down to recent times the 

 plague or "black death" of the Middle Ages has swept re- 

 peatedly over Europe leaving death and desolation in its 

 trail. "Truth is indeed stranger than fiction" and neither 

 the "Rienzi" of a Bulwer nor the "Romola" of an Eliot has 

 outdone, in their wonderful pictures of the pestilence which 

 overwhelmed Italy in the fourteenth century, the colorless 

 facts recorded by history. From time immemorial plague 

 appears to have been of frequent occurrence in Asia and 

 Africa, but only in recent years has it invaded the western 

 hemisphei-c. The outbreak in San Francisco in 1905 brought 

 home forcibly to Americans the truth that in these days of 

 rapid and easy communication between our own shores and 

 those of Asia we are living not to ourselves alone, but are in 

 truth our "brother's keeper." AVith the opening of tlie 

 Panama Canal and consc'quent shortening of the voyage 

 between the orient and our Gulf and Atlantic ports, llie 

 " 1, Samuel, vi, 5. 



