July 23.
Ar a time of national peril in 1910-1911, when an epidemic of pneumonic plague was raging in Manchuria and the north of China which eventually caused the death of 60,000 people, the Manchu dynasty rendered a great and lasting service to China by establishing the Manchurian Plague Preventive Service under the able leadership of Dr. Wu Lien-teh. Owing to the efficiency of this Service, when there was another outbreak in 1920 the mortality not more than 8,000, since then the disease has been successfully held in check. Consequently the latest Annual Report (1928-1924) consists mainly of a review of the work of the past. There is one paper in it, however, which extends our knowledge "of the disaas As long ago as 1907, and agai 1911, cases of plague occurred which seemed to prove that the disease started in the marmot or ut the evidence was not conclusive. Dr. Wa Lien-teh and his colleagues by their recent experiments have placed the matter beyond doubt. This very creditable piece of work is significant as it indicates that in Manchuria as ong as there are tarabagans with the disease there is the danger of outbreak of pneumonic plague.
Bubonic plague, is not appalling as pneumonic plague Dut in the long run it destroys more lives, especially in regions where it is endemic. Since 1896 eleven million people have died from it in India alone. It is a rat disease and is conveyed from diseased rats to human beings by the agency of fleas. A most important report has been made recently by Dr. F. Norman White, who was in Shanghai a few months ago, to the League of Nations Health Organization of which he is a member.
Hitherto it has been held that the germ, the bacillus pests, discovered independently by Kitasato and Yersin in 1894, was the cause of all forms of plague. But Dr. White, impressed by the striking differ-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.