Plague and Biot 



odour with the people from the events of the 

 previous year, there was no hospital to which 

 patients could be taken, and no provision for 

 their isolation. The authorities adopted the 

 remarkable expedient of placing a policeman 

 outside an infected house to prevent ingress or 

 egress. How the poor people were to live 

 was a question apparently ignored. And the 

 absurdity of the arrangement was grimly ex- 

 hibited when a policeman caught the disease 

 and died. A private subscription was got up 

 to supply food and medicines as far as possible, 

 but it is not surprising that the disease spread 

 with great rapidity, that it began to appear all 

 over the town and in the suburbs, and that it 

 assumed a virulent type. The statistics showed 

 that amonff six hundred cases there were two 

 hundred deaths. Probably this proportion is 

 misleading, as there may have been numerous 

 mild cases of which little or no notice was 

 taken. 



At first there was considerable disinclination 

 among the populace to be vaccinated. A dis- 

 trust of doctors, an evil heritage of the plague 

 trouble, was prevalent. For our part we in- 

 sisted on the vaccination of our employes^ and 



91 



