May 23, 1901] 



NA TURE 



91 



fable. The same writer makes some remarks on misappre- 

 hensions respecting; the Basqiie language. 



Many wild theories have been promulgated as to the origin of 

 the Basques, one of the most absurd being an attempt to relate 

 them with a certain tribe in Central America. Several scholars 

 have sought to affiliate the people with Lapps and Finns, and 

 they have been supposed to be related to the ancient Egyptians, 

 the ancient Pheenicians, the extinct Etruscans and to the Picts. 

 The Basque language appears to be absolutely without connec- 

 tion with any of the so-called Turanian (Ural-Altaic) languages, 

 since, as Keane shows in his " Man Past and Present " (p. 460), 

 there is no longer any doubt as to the relationship of the Basque 

 with the Berber language. 



The anthropometrical evidence has given rise to much con- 

 troversy. The French Basques have an average cephalic index 

 (on the living) of S3, while the Spanish Basques average 78, 

 according to Collignon, and 79 according to de Aranzadi in the 

 graphic curve published by the latter anthropologist, who, by the 

 bye, is himself a Basque ; there are two distinct maxima, one at 

 76 and the other at So, indicating, probably, that there are at 

 least two elements in the group. The French Basques are on 

 an average three-quarters of an inch shorter than their Spanish 

 brethren, 1657 mm. (5ft. 5Jins. ) and 163S mm. (5ft. 4Mns. ) 

 respectively. Both branches of the stock have a similar" very 

 characteristic head : the cranium is distinctly long even in the 

 most brachycephalic subjects, and is enormously swollen in the 

 temporal region, a character which is absolutely peculiar to this 

 people, the forehead is high and straight and narrow below, 

 the face is very elongated and has the shape of an inverted 

 triangle, the chin being thin and pointed ; the nose is corre- 

 spondingly long and narrow. 



Certain anthropologists have claimed that those Basques who 

 live north of the Pyrenees more nearly represent the primitive 

 stock, while the same has been asserted for those south of that 

 raiige. De Aranzadi thinks that those Spanish Basques with dark 

 hair and eyes and a rather narrow head and of middle stature are 

 of true Iberian origin and are related to the Berbers. Those 

 with darkish brown hair and greenish hazel eyes, a broad head 

 and low stature are, according to him, of Ugrian or Finnish 

 descent. G. Buschan, in a recent number of Globus (Bd. Ixxix. 

 p. 123), regards it as highly probable that the Basque race 

 resulted from a crossing of the short-heads of the earliest pre- 

 historic time, who probably wandered from Asia into Europe, 

 with the long-headed indigenous Mediterranean race. The 

 first of these two constituents he recognises as the race of Cren- 

 elle (French authors) or as the type of Sion or Disentis (His- 

 Rtitimeyer) or as the celts of Broca. Buschan has overlooked 

 the fact that Canon Isaac Taylor, in his " Origin of the Aryans," 

 had suggested this same explanation in 1890 and Beddoe had 

 alluded toil in his ".Anthropological History of Europe" in 

 1893. De Aranzadi recognises a third element with light hair, 

 blue eyes, narrow head and tall stature, which is a later addition 

 of Kymric or Germanic origin, and he suggests that this element 

 is related to the accursed race of the Cagots who were isolated 

 from their neighbours and had a separate church door for them- 

 selves. 



Collignon, who has made many brilliant studies in the anthro- 

 pology of France, draws attention to the very anomalous rela- 

 tion that exists between a cephalic index of 82 '5, which is 

 clearly brachycephalic, and a cranial length as great as 

 '?.' ."'.'"• ^^ '^ °f opinion that this permits us to look for the 

 affinities of the Basque race more in the direction of the long- 

 headed races ; the Nordic, or Teutonic, being clearly out of the 

 question, relationship must be sought among the Mediterranean 

 group of peoples rather than in the direction of the brachycephals 

 of France and of Central Europe. Collignon's view is that the 

 Basque type is a variety of the Mediterranean race that has for 

 a long period of time been geographically isolated, and the 

 retention of a difficult and uncouth language has formed an 

 equally efficient linguistic barrier. These factors induced in- and 

 in-breeding, and a well marked human variety has resulted. 

 Collignon's contention that the French Basques more nearly 

 represent the primitive stock is now generally admitted : the head 

 of tbe Spanish Basques has been narrowed and their stature 

 diminished by mixture with Spaniards who had been driven 

 into the mountains by the Moorish invasion. Those who desire 

 to learn more about this paradoxical people will find numerous 

 references to the literature in the valuable appendix to Ripley's 

 " Races of Europe,"' and additional titles are given by Buschan 

 in Globus (Bd. Ixxix. February 28, 1901). A. C. H. 



NO. 1647, VOL. 64] 



THE DIAGNOSIS OF PLAGUE} 



T HAVE no doubt that the plague expert, who has seen 

 epidemic plague in the East, will think it unnecessary on 

 the part of a bacteriologist to ask, What is plague ? for is not 

 plague, as it occurs in China, India, at the Cape, and other 

 parts weekly, nay, daily, by the score of cases, quite readily 

 diagnosed by its clinical features and by its pathology ? No one 

 can have any doubt about this being so ; that is to say, when 

 plague appears in a locality in epidemic form, the diagnosis of 

 any new case does not offer much difficulty ; nor would there be 

 experienced much difficulty in diagnosis by etiological, clinical, 

 pathological and bacteriological methods of a case, or of cases, 

 occurring in a ship coming from a plague-infected port : as, for 

 instance, the cases that occurred in connection with a vessel 

 which arrived about the middle of January in the port of Hull 

 - cases which belonged to the pneumonic type, and which from 

 the outset were, or ought to have been, at once diagnosed as such. 

 The difficulty in diagnosis commences when you have a single 

 or a first case occurring, where either the etiological data are 

 not satisfactory, or where the clinical history and symptoms are 

 not distinct and not typical. The cases of two sailors recently 

 examined illustrate these two difficulties. 



The outcome of the bacteriological analysis of one sailor who 

 arrived in London in October 1900 was that the case was plague. 

 In the .second case a plate made with a small droplet of pus 

 from a swelling yielded, besides staphylococci and streptococci, 

 a considerable number of colonies of the bacilbts festis. Tests 

 by subcultures and animal experiments (both as subcutaneous 

 and intraperitoneal injections) proved this conclusively. 



A third case is that of a boy that had recently occurred in one 

 of the London hospitals. This much is certain, that the boy 

 suffered from an illness the symptoms of which to a large degree 

 were compatible with true plague ; that etiologically no satis- 

 factory evidence was forthcoming to elucidate the disease. The 

 bacterioscopic evidence, which in certain respects supported the 

 diagnosis plague, in another essential respect — animal experi- 

 ment — negatived it ; and I would particularly draw attention to 

 the total absence of any microbes in the pus of the suppurating 

 bubo of the boy in the later stages of his disease, and to the 

 total absence of agglutinating action of his blood in the con- 

 valescent stage. 



Apart from the difficulties in diagnosis of isolated cases, there 

 are to be gathered, I think, several interesting and instructive 

 facts from the cases hitherto mentioned. 



In the first place, it is a fact that neither of the ship-borne 

 cases mentioned above gave rise to infection in other persons, 

 although during the whole journey they were freely inter- 

 communicating with other members of the ship's crews. It will 

 be no doubt said that pestis ambulans, the mild form with 

 which, at any rate, one of those two cases compares, is known 

 to possess only slight infectivity, and this infectivity might be 

 referable only to the matter of the open and discharging bubo. 

 In the two cases mentioned the number of bacilli pestis were 

 still considerable, and in one at least of the cases there was a 

 history of severe illness previous to arrival in English ports. 

 And I would, in this connection, express a priiiu} facie strong 

 scepticism as to the alleged high degree of infectivity of the 

 bubonic type of plague in general. In the case of the pneumonic 

 and septici'emic type, a high degree of infectivity is in complete 

 accordance with the bacteriological facts and with the wide 

 distribution of the plague bacilli in, and the copious 

 discharge from, the body of the patient. In the pneumonic 

 type, the exudation of the inflamed lung and the expectoration 

 teem with the plague bacilli ; in the septiccemic or hcsmorr- 

 hagic form the blood contains an abundance of the bacilli, 

 h.iemorrhages occur in the membranes of the alimentary, respir- 

 atory and urinary organs ; and therefore the voiding of plague 

 bacilli is extremely great and their diflfusion easy. I3ut in the 

 bubonic form, in the early phases of the disease, plague bacilli 

 are rare in the blood ; they are practically limited to the spleen 

 and lymph glands, and as long as these latter do not open I do 

 not see how they can be the agents of further infection. In the 

 urine and in the alimentary canal they certainly cannot be de- 

 monstrated in a living state in this form of the disease. When 

 the lymph glands, after the acute stage is passed, suppurate 

 and open, then, no doubt, plague bacilli can and do become 

 available. 



1 Abstr.-ict of a paper read before the Epidemiological Society on Friday, 

 May 17, by Dr. E. Klein, F.R.S. 



