CHAPTER XI 



BUBONIC PLAGUE CHICKEN CHOLERA- 

 MOUSE SEPTICAEMIA 



Bubonic Plague 



PLAGUE was epidemic throughout Europe during the 

 Middle Ages ; in England in the fourteenth century it 

 appeared as the Black Death, and in the seventeenth 

 century as the Great Plague of London, while numerous 

 other lesser visitations have been recorded. For some 

 years plague has been practically pandemic. The disease 

 seems always to have been endemic in certain centres, 

 e.g. in Asia Minor, on the Persian Gulf, in Yunnan, in 

 Uganda, etc. A characteristic of plague is the manner 

 in which it appears and remains prevalent for a time in 

 a district and then disappears, to reappear again after a 

 considerable interval ; this has happened not only in 

 Europe, but also in Persia, Syria, India, and China. 



Three principal types of the disease are recognised, the 

 bubonic in which the femoral (rarely the inguinal), axillary 

 and other glands become enlarged (whence the disease 

 derives its name), the septicaemic, and the pneumonic. 

 In India the disease has been mainly bubonic (70 per cent, 

 of the cases). Occasionally the majority of the cases are 

 pneumonic, as was the case in Accra, in China in 1910-11, 

 and in the small outbreak in Suffolk in 1910. Septicsemic 

 cases are the exception, but any form tends to become 

 septicsemic on the approach of death. 



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