the disease.
They at once appointed a new working commission who immediately began
their studies and experiments. The preliminary reports of their work,
which are still known as the Reports of the Indian Plague Commission, as
well as the reports of contributing investigations that are being made
from time to time, have served to establish entirely Dr. Simond's claims
and have completely revolutionized the methods of fighting plague.

There are several different types of plague, seeming to depend largely
on the manner of infection. The most common type is that known as the
bubonic plague which is characterized by buboes or swellings in various
parts of the body. This form of infection is usually received through
the skin in some manner or other. Only rarely does direct man-to-man
infection occur though there is always the possibility of it. The
investigations have shown that the flea is the most common agent in
transferring the disease from rat to rat or from rat to man. This may be
accomplished by the flea transferring the bacilli directly from one host
to another on its proboscis, or they may be carried in the alimentary
canal of the flea and gain an entrance into the skin through an abrasion
of some kind when the flea is crushed as it is biting, or when some of
the bacilli are left on the skin in the excreta of the insect.

RESULTS OF VERJBITSKI'S EXPERIMENTS

A very important series of experiments bearing directly on this subject
was made in 1902 and 1903 by Dr. D.T. Verjbitski. The paper giving the
results of this work was not published in any scientific journal until
1908 when the Advisory Committee published it in one of their reports.
The experiments were so well planned and executed and the results so
definite that I think it is worth while to give in full his summary of
results. The bugs referred to are bedbugs.

"(1) All fleas and bugs which have sucked the blood of animals
dying from plague contain plague microbes.

"(2) Fleas and bugs which have sucked the blood of animals which
are suffering from plague only contain plague microbes when the
bites have been inflicted from 12 to 26 hours before the death of
the animals, that is, during that period of their illness when
their blood contains plague bacilli.

"(3) The vitality and virulence of the plague microbes are
preserved in these insects.

"(4) Plague bacilli may be found in fleas from four to six