carried off human beings to the number of 68,596, in a population of 460,000, out of whom two-thirds are supposed to have fled to escape the contagion. The absence of Plague has been contemporaneous with better sanitary conditions maintained in various localities, and now it is only found where lack of knowledge of modern methods is prevalent among the people. But, even in the last outbreak in India, thanks to the physicians employed by the British Government, its ravages were much less serious than heretofore.
It is known, that in tetanus or lockjaw, and hydrophobia, the employment of a specific lymph, through inoculation, has made cures possible where formerly nearly all cases proved fatal. By means of the antitoxin treatment, the mortality in that dread disease, diphtheria, has been reduced more than one-half. Antiseptic precautions in surgical cases, first introduced by the famous surgeon, Lord Lister, have almost revolutionized the statistics, making possible and successful operations that formerly could not be dreamed of—thus broadening the whole scope of surgery as a science. In the war with Spain, and in the Transvaal, this fact has been most plainly demonstrated.
