760
THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE.
[No. 31

Licensing of Vehicles By-law made by the Grey County Council.

Colonial Secretary’s Office,
Wellington, 10th April, 1900.

IT is hereby notified, in accordance with section 311 of “The Counties Act, 1886,” that so much of the by-law, No. 10, made by the Grey County Council, and sealed on the 16th day of March, 1900, as appoints the several sums to be paid to the county funds for the licensing of vehicles has this day been approved by His Excellency the Governor.

J. CARROLL,
For Colonial Secretary.

Celebration of St. George’s Day.

Colonial Secretary’s Office,
Wellington, 18th April, 1900.

THE Government offices throughout New Zealand will be closed on Monday, the 23rd April, in celebration of St. George’s Day.

J. G. WARD.

Special Order made by the Moa Road Board, County of Taranaki.

Colonial Secretary’s Office,
Wellington, 18th April, 1900.

THE following special order, made by the Moa Road Board, is published in accordance with the provisions of “The Road Boards Act, 1882.”

J. G. WARD.

MOA ROAD BOARD.

Special Order.

THAT, to secure the repayment of a loan of £320 raised under “The Government Loans to Local Bodies Act Amendment Act, 1899,” subsection (1), clause 2, for the purpose of forming and metalling the Richmond Road from the junction of the Lincoln Road to boundary of Moa District, a special rate of 1½d. in the pound be made and levied over the following lands, which are hereby constituted “The Richmond Road Special Rating District”: Sections 215, 220 (in two subdivisions), 221 (in two subdivisions), 227, part 229, 230, part 233 (western portion), Block XIII., Waitara Survey District; part 232 (eastern portion), Block I., Huiroa Survey District. Such rate to be an annual recurring rate for twenty-six years, and to be payable in two half-yearly instalments on the 1st day of January and the 1st day of July in each year.

JOSEPH BROWN,
Chairman.

I hereby certify that the above special order has been made by the Moa Road Board in accordance with the provisions of “The Road Boards Act, 1882.”

A. E. ATKINSON,
Clerk.

Information respecting Bubonic Plague.

Colonial Secretary’s Office,
Wellington, 18th April, 1900.

THE following report respecting the bubonic plague, placed at the disposal of the Government by the Vice-Consul for Germany at Wellington, is published for general information.

J. G. WARD,
Colonial Secretary.

[Translation.]

GERMAN EMPIRE.

A MEETING of the Imperial Board of Health was held on the 29th September, 1899, having for its object the introduction of uniformity and system into the measures to be taken for dealing with the bubonic plague. At the meeting the necessity was recognised for a monograph on the subject adapted exclusively for the information of the medical profession, and a select committee was appointed to compile and publish such a paper. The committee consisted of the following extraordinary members of the Board: Professor Dr. Gaffky, of Giessen, and Professor Dr. Gerhardt, of Berlin, both members of the medical branch of the Privy Council; Professor Dr. Pfeiffer, of Königsberg, and Professor Dr. Sticker, of Giessen.

Their treatise is as follows:—

The history of epidemics teaches us that a plague, as often as it has shown itself in Europe and raged there, had been always introduced from elsewhere. It teaches further that it has repeatedly originated from an individual case in a district previously exempt from the disease, and that, even if the mode of its introduction remained unrecognised, every plague-epidemic without exception has by means of isolated cases slowly and gradually established itself.

When there is a danger of plague threatening it is therefore of immense importance that the earliest cases should be thoroughly understood; in fact, this is a necessary condition for the prompt and effective prevention of its further spread.

The object of this treatise is to make medical men acquainted with the actual phenomena of the plague as an illness and as an epidemic, and thus to put them in a position as far as possible to meet the responsibilities which, in times of plague as in ordinary infectious diseases, they share with the public-health authorities.

The plague attacks suddenly, and, as a rule, runs a course of from three to five days’ suffering. An inflamed swelling of the exterior lymph-glands, a pustule, a carbuncle on the skin, or an attack of the lungs emerge as a local symptom at the beginning or in the progress of the disease, or are only noticed for the first time on the dead body. These are, roughly speaking, the usual features.

At all periods of the appearance of the plague it has been found that even distinguished medical men, who did not know the more recondite symptoms of the appearance or were not thinking of the plague, on the first cases of the sickness, were able to cherish the conviction that they were merely dealing with an ordinary carbuncle, or with a common infection of the lymph-glands, or with an every-day case of inflammation of the lungs, or with a rapid and virulent typhus, intermittent fever, or spleen-disease. And they persisted in this mistaken notion until the number of similar attacks, the increasing list of deaths, the undoubted strength of the infection awakened them to the knowledge that a frightful evil, quite out of the ordinary, had developed before their eyes.

The sickness attacks persons of either sex and of every age and position. It usually makes its first appearance in the homes of the poor and miserable, and exhibits there its most virulent form.

The beginning of the pronounced sickness is sometimes heralded by premonitory symptoms lasting for hours or days—languor, depression, pains across the loins, headache, thirst, and loss of appetite. Frequently the attack is quite sudden. Sharp, burning, or dull pains in the locality where, later or at once, the gland-inflammation, carbuncle, or pneumonia makes itself felt may be the first signs of an illness, followed by a chill, a shivering attack, with subsequent fever-heat. This fever may last for hours, or even days, before the local symptoms take definite shape.

The first attack of the illness is almost always accompanied by a feeling of giddiness that may amount to a fit, with the outward signs of total loss of consciousness, with failing control over the limbs. The giddiness is frequently accompanied by nausea or vomiting, not seldom by weak action of the heart, even to the extent of collapse.

When the patient comes under medical treatment the form of the malady is in bad cases as a rule already fully developed. With look directed into vacancy, face bloated, flabby, and expressionless, the whites of the eyes bloodshot, laboured, stammering speech, hesitating, reeling gait, the patient gives the impression of a drunken man. This impression is sometimes confirmed by the fact that face and limbs are disfigured by scruff and bloody boils as he totters and tumbles. The tongue is pale in colour, as if coated with chalk; more rarely red like a raspberry, and warty. The skin over the whole body is dry and burning hot, or it shows increased heat in face and trunk, while the pulseless extremities are cold and covered with a clammy sweat. The breathing is laboured and gasping, the heart-beats greatly accelerated, the arteries distended; the radial pulse has a double beat, full or thread-like and almost extinct, whilst the heart-beat is still vigorous.

When put to bed the patient soon lies in a condition of drowsy weakness, muttering softly or talking at random; or he turns restlessly with noisy delirium from side to side on the bed, gets up, begins to wander restlessly, shows an angry rage under an imaginary impulse: he must go home; he must go to business; he must quench his thirst; and would escape if he were not restrained by attendants or fastened in the bed.

In most cases very careful observation will succeed, in the quite early stages of the illness, in localising the seat of the mischief, and thereby approaching a diagnosis. A newly arisen glandular swelling, or a boil on the skin, or signs of incipient lung-affection belong to the fully developed form of the plague-sickness, which may thus be met with in the three following forms: Glandular plague, skin-plague, or lung-plague. Gastric plague has up to the present been only traced with certainty in the lower animals.

The glandular or bubonic plague, the most frequent form of the disease, is manifested by the appearance of a bubo, which takes the form of an inflamed swelling of one or more lymph-glands, implicating the surrounding tissue, smaller or more vigorous, quicker or slower in its development. Any