Plague Threatens Central Africa

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · May 26, 1904

Plague Threatens Central Africa

THE New York Times discusses in a recent editorial the possibility of the spread of bubonic plague over central Africa. This possibility is suggested by the outbreak of the plague among the Chinese coolies collected at Hongkong for shipment to South Africa, to furnish labor in the mines. Precaution will no doubt be taken to prevent carrying plague-stricken coolies into Africa, but, as the Times observes, “the plague is a subtle malady, with a long period of incubation, and it may well happen that cases of it in its primary stages will escape the vigilance of the quarantine examiners, and be forwarded with clean bills of health, when they are really bearers of infection.”

Regarding the consequences of an outbreak of the plague at the Rand mines, the Times says:—

“The white populations could measurably protect themselves from it, as they do elsewhere; but once started among the blacks, there is no telling where it would end, or estimating the period of its continuance. Call the whole black population of equatorial Africa in round numbers a hundred millions, or rate them at any reasonable estimate, and the loosening of such a contagion among them, to creep on from year to year with the unconquerable persistency characteristic of the disease, would assure an outcome none the less tragic because most of its ravage would remain unrecorded.”

The British government has given up the fight against the plague in India, and no doubt if the disease should get a foothold among the African tribes, it would have to be allowed to run its course.