R6le of Fleas in the Transmission of Plague 



167 



111. A contemporaneous engraving of the pest hospital in Vienna in 1679. 

 After Peters. 



most incredible persecution and torture. In Milan the visitation 

 of 1630 was credited to the so-called anointers, — ^men who were 

 supposed to spread the plague by anointing the walls with magic 

 ointment — and the most horrible tortures that human ingenuity 

 could devise were imposed on scores of victims, regardless of rank 

 or of public service (fig. 112, a). Manzoni's great historical novel, 

 "The Betrothed" has well pictured conditions in Italy during this 

 period. 



In modem times the plague is confined primarily to warm climates, 

 a condition which has been brought about largely through general 

 improvement in sanitary conditions. 



At present, the hotbed of the disease is India, where there were 

 1,040,429 deaths in 1904 and where in a period of fifteen years, 

 ending with January 1912, there were over 15,000,000 deaths. The 

 reported deaths in that country for 1913 totaled 198,875. 



During the winter of 1910-11 there occurred in Manchuria and 

 North China a virulent epidemic of the pneumonic plague which 

 caused the death of nearly 50,000 people. The question as to its 

 origin and means of spread will be especially referred to later. 



Until recent years, the plague had not been known to occur in 

 the New World but there were outbreaks in Brazil and Hawaii in 

 1899, and in 1900 there occurred the first cases in San Francisco. 



