The Treatment of Plague

I can recall a suggestion which I made at a meeting of the Surat Medical Union in 1920, in a discussion on the treatment of plague. One can only understand the pathology of plague when one comes to examine cases at post-mortem examination. The majority of cases die before the sixth day of illness and show profound pathological changes in the heart and other organs. The condition present is a septicaemia and a haeinorrhagic septicaemia at that, and treatment must be directed to combating such septicaemia, just as in surgical or puerperal septicaemia. This means the introduction of large quantities of normal saline, either subcutaneously, intravenously, or by Murphy's method of proctolysis per rectum. The fluid introduced dilutes the toxins, raises the blood pressure?which tends to become very low in plague patients,?and assists micturition and sweating. 1 am now glad to see so expert a laboratory worker as Dr. Turkhud coming forward in support of such a suggestion on bacteriological grounds.