textile fabrics, and other similar materials may preserve the virus in an active state for several months. Such articles, therefore, coming from an infected district, more especially if there is any suspicion that they have been soiled by or have been in proximity to plague patients, should be destroyed or thoroughly disinfected.
In ships coming from an infected port the rats, mice, and such-like vermin should be destroyed, thrown overboard, and sunk before harbour is entered. The generation of sulphurous acid gas under pressure, especially the Clayton system, has been found useful for this purpose.
Kitasato found that bouillon cultures of the bacillus were killed in half an hour by a temperature of 80° C., and in a few minutes by steam at 100° C. Growth of the bacillus did not occur in cultures after exposure for one hour to a 1-per-cent. solution of carbolic acid. The bacilli are also killed by a three-hours' exposure to milk of lime. These facts serve as a guide to suitable disinfectants, of which the best and most practicable are steam, 1-in-1,000 corrosive sublimate in carbol-sulphuric acid, lysol, chloride of lime in 1-per-cent. solution, carbolic acid in 5-per-cent., formalin 2-per-cent.
On plague breaking out in a small -village community, so soon as the disease is recognized measures should be taken to prevent the inhabitants leaving the locality and in this way spreading the disease. There is little danger of this until the inhabitants become alarmed by a rapid extension of the disease. If possible, after the patients have been isolated in a special hospital, the village should be evacuated for a month, the inhabitants being accommodated in temporary huts close by, while the houses which the patients have occupied and those in their neighbourhood should be disinfected. The safest and most thorough form of disinfection is by fire, and in the case of an isolated village prompt destruction of the infected houses by fire is the surest method of stamping out the infection. The clothes and bedding of all patients should be burned. The
