Page:Tropical Diseases.djvu/394

352 disinfected and rendered rat-proof, and the disinfection of the clothes and belongings of the inmates.

For the detection of plague-infected houses, guineapigs, which do not harbour fleas as a rule, are now employed in Japan and India as convenient traps for rat-fleas. The guineapigs are turned loose in houses and warehouses, and rapidly succumb to the disease if plague fleas are present. In India the compulsory inspection of all dead bodies prior to burial has been found a valuable measure for discovering infected houses and localities. In all efforts to control the introduction and spread of plague, cases of pestis ambulans must be sought out and treated with as much respect as the more virulent forms of the disease.

It is very questionable if in practice any system of rigid quarantine, no matter how carefully devised and theoretically perfect, is ever absolutely protective. Its working is necessarily at the mercy of a large number of individuals, any one of whom, either from incompetence or from dishonesty, may permit its regulations to be broken through. Even if the introduction of plague by man could be prevented in this way, it is difficult to see how its introduction by rats or mice could be effectually guarded against. Quarantine may, and doubtless does, keep out a proportion of the infected, and to this extent it does some good; but it must be combined with careful general sanitation, with thorough disinfection, with the destruction of all discharges and fomites, with the speedy discovery and isolation of the sick, with the evacuation of infected houses and even of neighbourhoods, and with the wholesale destruction of vermin. These latter things English experience has shown to be far more effective than any system of quarantine; it was only in deference to Continental views that quarantine, in the ancient sense of the word, was practised in Great Britain against plague and yellow fever. A rational quarantine plus rational sanitary measures is what is wanted.

Destruction of vermin and other measures in anticipation of the introduction of plague virus.—