BACTERIOLOGY AND THE WAR. 1a | 
Kong, which spread to India, and eventually reached Europe, 
attacking the ports of Marseilles, Hamburg and Glasgow, 
while isolated cases occurred in Liverpool. 
Research has shown that plague is due to the Bacillus 
pestis, and that the bubonic form, the common type in Europe, 
is entirely dependent on the infection of rats, the disease 
being spread from rat to rat, and from rat to man, by means 
of the rat flea. Fortunately the rat fleas do not usually bite 
man. There have been four fatal outbreaks of human plague 
in Kast Anglia within the last six years, where the disease 
was first introduced into Suffolk by ship rats from plague- 
infected countries. A few rabbits also became infected. 
Precautions are now taken in Liverpool, London, and else- 
where to prevent the ship rats from plague infected ports 
coming ashore, while city and port rats themselves are con- 
stantly being examined for plague bacilli—-7,000 rats were 
examined in Liverpool last year. 
So far as I am aware, only a few cases of plague have 
occurred among the belligerent armies. The disease is not 
likely to spread, as the last epidemic which travelled from the 
Far East died down a few years ago. 
CHOLERA. 
The microbe of cholera is curled rather like a comma, and 
it has a tail or flagellum at one extremity by which it swims. 
Cholera is mainly spread by infected water. Three serious 
epidemics occurred in Liverpool in the early part of the last 
century, the first being about 1832.* Behind the Liverpool 
Children’s Infirmary there is a large playing ground. How 
many citizens realize that hundreds of victims of the cholera 
microbe are buried there? Not a tablet, not a monument 
marks the spot. 
*It was supposed to have spread over Europe as the result of the 
Russo-Polic War in 1831. 
