Show THE = BLACK i DEATH IN CHINA Fears That It Will Sweep Over Eastern Asia Before It Disappears Black death that mysterious disease dis-ease which has teen creating such havoc among the natives at Canton seems destined to sweep over eastern Asia HongKong has been attacked by this insidious and fatal enemy and already hundreds have succumbed to it The colony is almost shut off from communication communi-cation save by telegraph with other Asiatic ports and every effort is being made to cheok the spread of the plague Strict quarantine regulations have been made and outgoing steamers on oriental lines carry neither freight nor passengers passen-gers But the germs of the diseaseseem abe a-be in the air for latest news is that deaths by tho plague havo already oc curred in Japan The natives are panic stricken The plague made its appearance in HongKong about May 10 when many dead rats were found in the streets This is the first sign the disease makes Usually other animals areetricken before human beingsare affected The spread of the disease was most rapid In a few days the victims claimed numbered nearly 50 daily Itwaseven more fatal there than in Canton fully 60 per cent of those seized dyingjn about 48 hours Ono cause that led to this result was that there had been jio rainfall for along a-long period and all streams and sources of drainagewere foul Vigorous steps I were taken to secure artificial flushing of all drains and a thorough cleansing I of the entire ci io was had but there was np decrease until about the 20th I when several heavy rain storms occurred oc-curred Health officers made a house to house canvass of the district of tho city where the disease seemed to center and all sick jpersons were removed to the Irfgeia I the hospital ship in the harbor The dead were taken in chareo bv ihesamo officials and buried at onco in a place espepially selected When the disease was at its worst the deaths in the hospitals numbered about 30 daily In some oases whole families were exterminated in a few days Europeans seem to be almost proof against the disease although in somo cases their surroundings wore the same as those of the Chinese An exqep tioii to this is tho death of several Portuguese Por-tuguese inHongKong The cause of the strange malady is a mystery but it is undoubtedly a filth disease A physician who had large experience i ex-perience with tho tjlack plague in Pak hoi some years ago said in an interview that it was due to foul smells The plagues symptoms as described already are as follows With or without premonitory pre-monitory warning iii the shape of chill there is a sudden feverrising to 105 degrees de-grees or over There is much headache and cerebral disturbance accompanied by stupor In from 12to 24 hours a glandular glan-dular swelling occurs in the neck armpit arm-pit or groin rapidly enlarging to the size of a fowls egg It is hard and exceedingly ex-ceedingly tender With or without a decline of the fever the patient sinks deeper into a condition of coma and dies usually at the Bnfi of 48 hours or sooner He declared that animals were affected first because the germs were near the ground Native reports from Canton say that the epidemic is somewhat decreasing there but many new cases are still reported re-ported It is said that fish are also stricken and fishermen in some districts dis-tricts have been forced to ceaso operations opera-tions San Francisco Chronicle |