ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of natural history and rational preventive measures of plague. Plague continues to be one of the most devastating of the world's diseases. Ogato in 1897 found plague bacilli in fleas derived from rats' dead of bubonic plague, and he gave plague to mice by inoculating them with crushed fleas taken from infected rats. It was proved that plague bacilli multiply in the flea's stomach. Experiments made for the Indian Plague Commission showed that rats fed on bodies of rats dead of plague did not become infected, not even when they were fed on the excreta of diseased rats. It was found that plague rats themselves did not infect the floors of invaded houses. For healthy rats and guinea pigs running about these floors did not acquire plague, so long as fleas were absent. It was found that houses from which plague patients had been removed were dangerous in proportion to the number of rat fleas.
