THE EXPEDITION TO MANCHURIA. 133 



wall the full length of the room, served as beds. (See Plate III.) 

 On our first arrival at the hospital, we found that, owing to 

 the great fear of contracting the disease that existed among the 

 hospital attendants, the patients secured practically no medical 

 attention. They were merely brought to the hospital to die, 

 and the dead were removed each morning to the dead house. 

 The patients lay on these platforms, or couches, side by side 

 in their ordinary street clothes, and were not separated one 

 from another in any way. We sometimes found patients with 

 other diseases and with forms of lung trouble other than plague 

 pneumonia on these couches, and in some instances we were able 

 to save them from plague infection by the early diagnosis of 

 the disease and by their speedy removal. The floors and walls 

 of the wards were frequently spotted copiously with bloody 

 sputum which had been expectorated upon them. We at once 

 instituted a system by means of which an early diagnosis was 

 made and an immediate bacteriological examination of the spu- 

 tum of each case entering the hospital was performed. Later 

 some beds were secured and many of the patients were placed 

 on these. Also, hot tea and rice were supplied to them when 

 they were able to receive such food. The wards were very 

 inadequately heated by small iron stoves, and the temperature 

 in them was at least during the night below the freezing point. 

 The sputum in the sputum cups was frequently found in the 

 morning to be frozen solid. No other European or American 

 physicians attended the hospital, but there was a staff of Chinese 

 doctors and medical students under the direction of Dr. Y. S. 

 Wang, and towards the end of the epidemic an English male 

 nurse was employed by the Chinese. In the early part of the 

 epidemic a number of the native staff of the hospital became 

 infected and died of plague. 



We observed the strictest personal precautions against con- 

 tracting the disease and never entered the wards unless fully 

 protected by a proper mask, by goggles, usually rubber gloves, 

 and by a cotton uniform. (See Plate IV.) Although we worked 

 in the wards each day until the end of the epidemic and were 

 often with patients for several hours continually, giving intra- 

 venous injections, leaning over coughing patients, exposing agar 

 plates before them, making physical examinations, etc., we 

 remained entirely healthy. 



The type of mask which we used consisted of a cotton-wool pad, 

 12 centimeters wide, broadly folded in plain gauze, the two ends 

 of which were each cut into three parts as a three-tailed bandage. 



