SUMMARY OF RESULTS 



231 



by plague, the excellent arrangements of the 

 Western world. In all such cases, and in all 

 cases of epidemic plague within narrow limits, as 

 in jails, barracks, mills, and the like centres of 

 human life ; and in all inner communities, such as 

 the Parsee community at Daman, or the Jewish 

 community at Aden — by every test of this kind, 

 the saving power of preventive inoculation has 

 been proved, again and again, past all doubt. As 

 for those larger death-traps, Hubli, Dharwar, and 

 the rest of them, here, though the statistics are 

 inexact, we have the word of the men and women 

 themselves who stood between the dead and the 

 living, and the plague was stayed. Such faults as 

 there were, in 1899, in the treatment — the contami- 

 nation of this or that stock of the fluid, and the 

 inadequate method of standardisation — have been 

 duly noted by the Commission. The rush for the 

 fluid in 1899 may be estimated from the following 

 paragraphs : — 



i. Paris. " The preparation of anti - plague 

 serum is being rapidly proceeded with ; up to the 

 present time the Institute has supplied it, in 

 response to all the very numerous requests which 

 have come from Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Turkey, 

 without encroaching on the reserve kept in readiness 

 for Paris and the departments." {Lancet, 16th 

 September 1899.) 



ii. India. " The spread of plague westward to 

 Spain and Portugal seems to have excited more or 

 less general alarm, and I hear that an unprecedented 

 demand has suddenly arisen for the plague prophy- 

 lactic fluid. The Government of India have been 



