Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 185, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1912 — PLAGUE SPREAD BY CAMEL [ARTICLE]

PLAGUE SPREAD BY CAMEL

Carcass of Dead Beast Left Exposed Caua#d- Slight Outbreak in > Russia. The Paris Medical publishes some observations which throw an important light on the cases of plague which occurred in Russia some time ago. As far back as 1907 Dr. Klodnitzlhy noticed in the Cazarel Island, in the Caspian Sea, a, slight outbreak of plague. Three women were attacked, and he was able to establish, after inquiry, that they had all tyee been engaged in handling the caffcass of a camel which had died from some unknown cause. Later, in April, 1911, plague appeared in a little place in the district of Kamysch-Samara. Six persons were attacked with plague, and all had eaten of a camel that had died. At the end of September, in the same year, another camel in the district died, and then an autopsy was made. There were no clear indications of any injuries to account for death, but in the viscera the doctor found a bacillus identical with that of Yersin, the cultures of which reproduced plague in animals which were inoculated. Toward the end of the same month other human beings were attacked, and the outbreak coincided with the death of a camel, and tests with the blood produced a typical plague bacillus. Dr. Klodnitzlhy has no doubt that the cases of plague in the human beings owed their origin to eating the flesh of plague-stricken camels, and he suggests that the camels in question had been eating herbage which had become Infected by camels suffering from the disease.