MEASURES AGAINST BUBONIC PLAGUE
In 1906, when our malarial rate was highest, we had eight hundred out
of every thousand of our employees admitted to hospitals on account
of malaria. In 1913 we had only seventy out of every one thousand of
our laborers admitted for this disease. The yearly table for malarial
rate is as given below:
1906 821 per 1,000
1907 426 ” 1,000
1908 282 ” 1,000
1909 215 ” 1,000
1910 187 ” 1,000
1911 184 ” 1,000
1912 110 ” 1,000
1913 76 ” 1,000
Yellow fever was entirely eradicated. In 1904 we had a few cases, and
in 1905, a sharp epidemic. In November, 1905, the last case occurred
in the city of Panama, and in May, 1906, the last case in the town
of Colon. Since that time no cases have originated on the Isthmus.
On June 20, 1905, Nehemiah Morgan, a Jamaican negro, employed at
La Boca, the southern terminus of the Canal, was admitted to the
hospital with symptoms of bubonic plague. The name La Boca has since
been changed to Balboa. This man died on June 23, and the autopsy
confirmed the diagnosis. On the twenty-sixth, a quarantine was placed
against La Boca. Dr. James Perry, of the United States Public Health
Service, was placed in charge. He was supplied with a force of four
foremen and one hundred laborers, who under his direction did the
necessary cleaning and fumigation. This quarantine was kept up until
July 15, when it was raised, as there was no further indication of
plague or plague-infected rats.
Dr. Perry deserves the greatest credit for the efficient way in which
he managed to stamp out this infection, so threatening and dangerous
to the work.
Plague is an infectious disease caused by a well-known germ, the
bacillus pestis. It is a disease of the rat, and is transferred from
the rat to a human being by the rat flea. Anti-plague measures are,
therefore, almost entirely directed toward the destruction of rats.
Rigid quarantines are also kept up, so as to prevent human beings
sick with the disease from going to uninfected places, and there
starting new foci of infection.
The measures used against rats are poisons of various kinds, but
the rat is one of the most intelligent of animals, and soon learns
to avoid poisons. The same thing is true with regard to traps.
Rats so rapidly learn about poisons and traps that some writers
on anti-plague measures advise that these measures be used only
during emergencies, when plague is either present, or there is
imminent danger of an outbreak, the argument being that if you use
these measures continuously, the rats will become so knowing that
you cannot kill them when plague is upon you and they are actually
infected.
Mr. Le Prince arranged a very successful rat-trap which killed the
rat by short-circuiting between two electric wires. Such a trap
placed in a rat runway gave no notice to the rat whatever, and always
killed him. But it requires some skill to manipulate such a trap, and
our Jamaican darkies were so often shocked in trying to arrange it
that Mr. Le Prince gave it up.
Undoubtedly, the best anti-plague measures are those calculated
to free the town from rats permanently, and these measures relate
principally to rat-proofing the houses. In a general way, these
measures consist in making a concrete floor, and in putting six or
eight inches of concrete in the wall around this floor. With the
whole town fixed up in this way, you would have no rats. At the same
time, disposal of garbage should be carefully looked after, with the
object of limiting the food supply of rats.
Dr. Connor, of Colon, invented an excellent garbage stand, so
arranged that a lid automatically closed the garbage can whenever the
lid had been raised and released. If, however, a town has been made
entirely rat-proof, that town is pretty secure from plague. If there
are no rats there, no harm will be done, even if cases of plague come
in, for there would be no means of transmitting it from man to man.
If you have plenty of rats in a commercial city, such as Panama, in
direct commercial relation with cities having plague, you are sure,
in the course of time, to get in plague cases, no matter how good
your quarantine, and if plague once gets in where there are plenty of
rats it is very apt to spread.