4 T. P. ANDERSON STUART. 



poison them. The bearing of these experiments and these 

 results on the question of rabbit destruction by the aid of 

 microbes is obvious. What grounds have we for expecting 

 that the rabbit microbe if successful would be more 

 successful than the rat microbe has been ? 



The Plague.— During the year we have enteredourseventh 

 outbreak of plague in Sydney, and it has been quite remark- 

 able with what consistency cases in the human subject have 

 followed the discovery of cases in the rat on the premises 

 frequented by the people who afterwards developed the 

 disease. Clinically, therefore, the connection between the 

 plague rat and the plague patient has become so certain 

 that we have not hesitated to act upon the hypothesis of a 

 causal connection between the disease in the rat and the 

 disease in man, and great credit is due to Dr. Ashburton 

 Thompson for independently workiug out the epidemiology 

 of the subject so fully. As a working hypothesis it seemed 

 also most probable that the flea transferred the infective 

 particle from the rat to man, as had been suggested by 

 Simond in 1898, though afterwards doubted. But a long 

 step forward has been taken in this subject in the 

 results of the Plague Research Committee appointed 

 conjointly by the India Office, the Royal Society of 

 London, and the Lister Institute in London. The 

 director of the Lister Institute, Dr. C. J. Martin, f.r.s., is 

 well known in Sydney, where he was connected with the De- 

 partment of Physiology in the University for some years. 

 It was under Dr. Martin's direction that the experiments in 

 India were conducted, and from the interim report published 

 in September last, it is established beyond all doubt that 

 the flea is a means, and probably the means, by which 

 the microbe is transferred from the rat to man. Flies, 

 ants, bugs, and lice have all been found with the bacillus 

 in their stomachs, but it is the flea that is the plague 



