556 CARLO TIRABOSCHI 



infectivity of clothes so often noticed. It is probably the Fleasin Ihe 

 clothes that are the danger, not Ihe clothes themselves. It also ser- 

 ves to explain why there were as maiiy buboes in the groin in the 

 booted x\ustralians as among the barefooted Indians of Bombay, 

 for the legs are the places most often bitten by Fleas. If the plague 

 infection was derived from the soil the latter class of person ought 

 to develop more groin buboes than Ihe former, but this is notso. » 



Nous avons déjà vu ffue Thompson conclut àla nécessité d'un être 

 vivant intermédiaire entre l'Homme et le Rat. En effet (3, p. 563), 

 l'infection pesteuse a été trouvée, en dehors du corps humain, 

 seulement dans le corps desanimauxinférieurs; l'Homme doit donc 

 recevoir cette infection de la part du Rat ; mais le Rat mort ne peut 

 pas l'infecter, donc « the intermediation of some Insect which bas 

 the power of taking it from the Rat and of inocnlating it into Man,, 

 and which can retain the latter power for a considérable time, is 

 the only means consonant with ail the recognised pheuomena which 

 can be imagined ». Pour démontrer que cet intermédiaire doit être 

 la Puce, Thompson examine les 12 cas de peste de 1902, (( in which 

 solitary buboes, situated in the fémoral chain (résultant, therefore,. 

 from inoculation in the lower extremlty) were exhibited by persons 

 who had certainly received. the infection attheirworkplaces. There 

 they were ail clothed. Their lower extremities were thoroughly 

 well-protected, at ail events from casual contact with deposited 

 infection, by boots and socks or stockings, and by trousers or pet- 

 ticoats, while their hands, arms and faces, and sometimes their 

 chest too, no doubt, were fully exposed. Yet they were not inocu- 

 lated in those exposed partes, but in their protected parts. Thèse 

 cases showed that inoculation must hâve been effected by some 

 agent to which neither clothes nor the epithelium ofïered serions 

 obstacles; by some agent which could CA'ade the one, and which 

 could penetrate the otherwithout causing eithernoticeable pain or 

 a visible wound (I). It was perceived, of course, that the Flea alone 

 answered thèse requirements »... 



Mayer, après avoir résumé les expériences de Liston et de Lâmb 

 (voir p. 559), ajoute : « Fur die Flohtheorie sprâchepraktischauch 



(1) Bannermann aussi (2) donne une grande valeur au fait que les bubons ingui- 

 naux sont également plus fréquents chez les Australiens chaussés que chez ceux: 

 qui vont mi-pied)>. 



