The following letter scarcely culls for the xaual editorial reserca~ Gnparent than ita great intercept, tion app 4 ices Ita importance will for all readers. ir,—You have already announced outbreak of bubonic plague in Muzehuria. The area affected lies along the southern arm of the Sze-Tao Railway, which runs westward from Szepingkai, a station on the 'South Manchurian Railway about half. way between—'Mukden and Changchun. 'The terminus of the Tine is at Tunglino, close to the Mongolian border. From' Tunglino byaneh of the Peking-Mukden passes south to join the Tientsin-Mukden line. at shan, a little west of Kuowitze, the junction for Newch-
The relation of the railways to the infected district is of obvious importance, since from its present si the epidemic menaces Voth, the two railway systems of South Manchuria, The whole region is flat and steppe-like, part Of the great plain of Inner Mongolia, amd until recent years was waste Jand very thinly peopled, Latterly there has been a large influx of settlers and it is rapidly becom. ing agricultural, 'The outbreak' began about September 1, and sinza then over 250 deaths have been officially notified. A minor outbreak last autumn served as a warning and this year Prompt notice was given of the @arlier deaths. The Chinese and Japanese authorities took alarm at preventive work was immediately started and the epidemic corns already to be under control, Dr. Wu Lien-teh, who hus og much experience of plague as any one, has expressed the opinion that the ye will end within two months.
Import of New Railway Plan not, however, my purpose to describe the outbreak or to dilate on the prompt and excellent measures taken to suppress it, reason for addressing you, Sir, is to draw attention to the epidemiologica} dangers arising out of the "mew railway programme in western Manchuria and to discuss some Points bearing on Mongolian plague and. its relation to the opening up of Eastern Mongolia.
For many years plague has been reported almost annually as having upbeared in Mongolia.
Now plague ig net primarily a disease of man, to whom it is transmitted so to peak accidentally from the rodents who are its natural, hosts, And tthe first, point to emphasize is that the. wild rodents of Mongolia in certain areas are a permanent reservoir of plague, Of—these rodents, which occur in enormous numbers, the most important for our purpose is the marmot or tarabogan, since it is extensively hunted for its pelt and is thus brought directly into contact with man. Every now and then, gon-erally in the late summer,' and often through the trapping of tarabagans, the plague leaves the rodents and comes as it were to the surface to infect human beings. The native Mongols are able to recognize sick marmots, and avoid there areas where experience has taught them that the animals are affected. But other hunters are nally not $0 selective, Such acdents are reported from Mongolia and the Transbaikal almost every year, and many" must pass, unrecorded in those vast empty spaces, Usually since the population and utbrea'ss remain localized. 'A few fe exterminated, a village ined out, and then the plague down' for lack of human vie: tims and retreats to ite normal underground hosts, The Pneumonie Plague Gne peculiarity of this northern pert is its tendency, and that markedly beyond the habit of ordinary plague, to produce, among 1 bubonic and' sept pneumonic or primary lung plague. Ordinary bulionie plague as seen, say, in India, spreads mainly through rats and their: parasites, and is actually less contagious than measles or scarlet fever, though many times more deadly, It has also a variable mortality. In the north bubonic plague can propagate itself without infecting domestic rodents. Much more true is this of pneumonic plague; it passes from human Victim to human -vietim direct, the Sbundant bloody germ-laden sputum being sprayed out with each cough; and it almost invariably kills, Indoors and at close range infection is practically i As winter comes on, the inhabitants of those regions, by reason of the bitter cold, Russians, Mongols and Chinese alike, and especially the last, huddle into crowded huts or unventilated dugouts. Once pneumonic plague appears in such an atmosphere it spreads like wildfire, Of families of @ dozen not one may survive.
The. stricken community scatter, (many dying by the wayside. So i has been for centuries. At long intervals or by some accident the plague may reach town, Then it may give rise, granted suitable circumstances, to. widespreading destruction. Such was the Plague Justinian, Suck was the Black Death, which in the Middle Ages from its home in Central Asia devastated the whole known world.
But in those hiatorie calamities the onwanl march was slow and erratic. Distance and the sparsity of population at. its seat were again and again the safeguards of humanity against the grisly Terror.
The Railway As Carrier With the coming of the railroads the position has entirely changed. No longer does the refugee incubnting the discase stagger over the long and lonely trail. Now he ma Jattain the rapid transit of stea and readily survive to reach and in: fect one of the larger centres of population. 'Then the plague expands in percussive circles like an explosion, and we get such drama'.c edtastrophies as smote Harbin and elsewhere in the great Manchurian pdemic of 1010-11, when the plague from Transbaikal got astride the rail at Manchuli, and 60,000 people perished in the railway towns Within two motiths, "This and tie finaller visitation of 1920-21, when there were 9,000 deaths, were the first examples of the influence of railroads om the range and speed <f travel of Mongolian plague. Thus he railways have neutralized the first safeguard and the influx >f Shantung immigrants into endeni areas Is rapidly negativing the 99: cond,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.