2020: DAY 6:
BUBONIC PLAGUE
TWO CASES YESTERDAY
DEATH OF A PATIENT
PROGRESS OF CLEANSING OPERATIONS - optimistic report. Meeting to be held in Paddington to form citizens sanitary committee. -
A WALK THROUGH THE QUARANTINE AREA
HOW IT IS BEING CLEANSED
WHOLESALE SCAVENGING "Most of the public have the privilege of looking at the quarantined area of Sydney from the outside and in gazing on bonfires burning in the streets, or drays passing along on their way to the wharves. There is very little else to be seen. Yet if they were permitted to go inside and mix with the men at work they would become aware of a good deal that is instructive without being beautiful, and which is also offensive to the sense of smell...To pass along the streets one might see barrels of limewash, great watering cans filled with water boiling from the addition of sulphuric acid, and giving off stream as it boils, mud coming up from underground apartments, and men filling the same into drays. Yesterday the steamers of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade would also have been seen in Kent St with long lines of hose playing all over the street washing down the paved and guttered ways, and sending tons of water down Erskine and Margaret Sts into the harbour..." - mud - "evil-smelling" "It will hardly be credited, but there were dwellings in the areas which had no backyards at all because the space which was intended to serve for it was covered with a fowl house, a wood and coal shed, and perhaps a kitchen and laundry. Many of the yards...(After demolition) Sunlight has been let into the houses, there is an avenue of fresh air to enter without being tainted with the exhalations from decomposing kitchen refuse or warehouse waste....Before (whitewash) was applied a liberal application of carbolic acid solution or sulphuric acid was employed to kill any germs of disease which might have adhered to the stone or brick - masonry is often out of perpendicular because of retaining walls to prevent slippages. something will need to be done. (tear down buildings because of structural unsoundness-> i.e. building and earth itself doesn't fit into ideal geometry. -
TAR BURNING IN THE STREETS - suggestion of tar-burning as means of killing germs. -
INSTRUCTIONS TO HOUSEHOLDERS - 100,000 printed. -
NET FISHING IN THE HARBOUR - Hawkesbury and Brisbane Water opened for fishing. No fish from Pt Jackson are on sale (The public is reassured) -
MUNICIPAL COUNCIL
DARLING HARBOUR WATER FRONTAGES *- suggestion of resuming wharves. Much agreement in council. Hughes suggested that if part of city remodelled, plague would be a blessing in disguise. - " a magnificent opportunity which might never occur again." -> council should place scheme before govt. Council had existed under all sorts of difficulties and hamperings and had never received any assistance from Govt since 1879. Dr Graham said it wasn't the council's responsibility and it shouldn’t take initiative. Mayor - what is Harbours and Rivers Dept doing? They're responsible below high water mark. - Motion passed recommending that govt resume frontages. Deputation to be sent to Premier.
QUARANTINE REGULATIONS - local govt announces precautions - Launceston, Albury, Brisbane, Goulburn, Kiama, Murwillumbah -
DARLING HARBOUR RESUMPTION - Sydney Labour Council passed resolution urging govt. to resume privately-owned wharfs in Darling Harbour , to destroy and rebuild on grounds of their menace to health of workers and public. - also asked for representation on Board of Health in view of Mayor's and Chamber of Commerce president's appointments. -
THE STATE OF NOUMEA - more cases no more deaths (The previous day, ref to death of numerous Kanakas but not from plague. -
THE SOUTHGATE DESTRUCTOR - letter from company sec, saying that the gases emitted would be odourless and pure since destructor consumed all noxious gases and foul air.
HAFFKINE'S PROPHYLACTIC SERUM – ITS VALUE AS A PREVENTATIVE
COMMENTS BY THE INDIAN PLAGUE COMMISSION - report on last issue of The Lancet - "the best results ... will only be obtained after an accurate method of standardisation has been devised."
THE SPREAD OF PLAGUE AND ITS PREVENTION (letter to ed) - till recently study of bacteria considered to be a fad and of no practical value. " and so I and others were not allowed to keep cultures of the plague bacilli for fear of some imaginary risk to the community. In the hands of experts such risks can scarcely be said to exist. These bacilli are kept in every properly equipped laboratory in Europe, and though naturally the risk is greatest to the person who works with them, there is no instance in which plague has attacked any investigator who understands the nature of his prisoner." Measures in place will effectually stamp out disease. (Language of war) - isolation, segregation, disinfection. Ref. to Koch's work on cholera in Marburg. The body is enemy or as territory invaded by enemy agents - > "The germs exist in the body but they may be permanently imprisoned. Still they may escape from the body in the excreta and precautions must be adopted to blockade these ports of possible exit and render these discharges free from danger. - disputes flea theory because rat fleas and fleas that attack man are different. - thinks isolation, segregation, disinfection better than widespread inoculation. - disputes value of Yersin's serum. - we can’t have much faith in the Board of Health or the council but we can in the medical officers who are exterminating the disease - and in Mr Lyne who has rendered valuable service. Let's hope there'll be a reorganisation in sanitary services so that Sydney ceases to be "one of the filthiest places int he southern hemisphere." W Camac Wilkinson, M.D. Lond.
LETTER FROM PESTIS - warns of dangers from mosquitoes and money. While clothes of diseased person are burned, money is taken out of pockets and and continues in circulation.
LETTER FROM J.S. COOPER - disputing Cremator's advice. Too much fire isn't a good thing.
Letter asking for crematorium. - > worried about risks from burying bodies - editorial saying that outbreak has been greatly exaggerated. Disease is part and parcel of our daily lives, always has been: enteric fever, gaol fever, typhoid among miners on gold fields, deaths of combatants in South Africa (from smallpox and typhus) Travellers who visit the East and Europe must enter many spots where plague, smallpox, typhoid are prevalent ..."all these are rightly regarded as the ordinary risks of civilized life." So, take precautions but don't panic. And country people should still come for the Easter Show., -
THE SITUATION MAFEKING (still not relieved)
Margaret St, Sydney, Source: State Library of NSW