— 3 o 3 — 
Mémoires 
La peste à Sin-lam district de Heung-shan, 
province de Kouang-tong (Chine), surtout 
au point de vue de la vaccination 
Par F. OLDT. 
This is the sixth year (1911) of plague in Sin lam.-It usually 
begin, in march coincident with the beginning of the warm rainy 
foggy weather of spring time and ends in July when the bright hot 
sunshing days of summer begin. Sin lam has a population of 
about 200.000 people and the plague case average about 30 daily 
at the height of the plague season. This is only an estimate based 
on the number of funerais that pass a given spot on the way to 
the cemetery and on the statements of owners of coffin shops. 
The cases of plague are mostly bubonic. Most frequently the 
gland is in the groin, next in frequency is the axilla, then in the 
cervical région. A native practioner of Western medicin repor¬ 
ters one case in which the gland was in the popliteal space. Earlv 
in the season manv people were reported as dying after an illness 
of only a few hours with the following symptoms ; sudden onset, 
high fever, delirium, death, no bubo or cough. Such cases were 
not seen personally, as the people said there was not time enough 
to call a doctor. I myself saw one pneumonie type. There was a 
high case mortality. I could hear of but one or two recoveries. 
There may hâve been more recoveries of mild unrecognized cases. 
In the previous year there was always a clear history of the 
plague appearing among rats a week or more before appearing 
among humans in any given locality and a history of one or more 
rats found dead in the house of almost every patient seen. This 
year the situation was the exact reverse. Instead of people even 
voluntarily speakins of the rats dying, a careful questionning 
failed to reveal any satisfactory evidence of a rat epizootie. 
Vaccination. — Owing to some sixty successful vaccinations 
the year before, there was not the préjudice against it this year- 
