ABSTRACT
On 19 January 1900, 33-year-old Mr A.P., ‘a rather slight muscular man, fair and of nervous temperament’, was driving a lorry through the city of Sydney at about noon when he was suddenly seized with giddiness, headache and stomach pain. When he had delivered his load to the warehouse, he lay down for a while, but continued with his work in the afternoon ‘though still suffering’. His condition deteriorated overnight, and on 25 January he was positively diagnosed as suffering from bubonic plague.2 The official medical report does not tell us whether or not A.P. died; after 24 January, attention shifts from A.P. to the condition of the mice and guinea pigs injected with tissue specimens from his infected glands. These very rapidly developed the plague and were dead within a day, and the medical report then concerned itself with the results of the post-mortems (complete with photographs of dissected animals).
