Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link Skip directly to A-Z link Skip directly to A-Z link
Volume 24, Number 1—January 2018
Historical Review

Pneumonic Plague in Johannesburg, South Africa, 1904

Charles M. EvansComments to Author , Joseph R. Egan, and Ian Hall
Author affiliations: University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK (C.M. Evans); Public Health England, Wiltshire, UK (J.R. Egan, I. Hall)

Main Article

Table

Plague cases by disease type and patient race and sex, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1904*

Disease type
 White
Indian
Colored
Native
 Total
M
 F
 M
 F
 M
 F
 M
 F
Pneumonic
Cases 4 4 88 4 0 0 12 1 113
Deaths
 4
 4
86
 4
0
 0
12
 1
 111
Bubonic
Cases 10 6 6 0 3 1 14 0 40
Deaths
 1
 2
3
 0
0
 0
3
 0
 9
Mixed
Cases 0 0 3 0 0 0 3 0 6
Deaths
 0
 0
3
 0
0
 0
3
 0
 6
Septicemic
Cases 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
Deaths
 2
 0
0
 0
0
 0
0
 0
 2
Total
Cases 16 10 97 4 3 1 29 1 161
Deaths 7 6 92 4 0 0 18 1 128

*The actual number of deaths from pneumonic plague recorded was 111 and not 67 as reported in Table 2, page 12, of the Rand Plague Committee report (8). Similarly, the number of deaths from bubonic infection was 9 and not 7. The text of the RPCR indicates that the category “coloured” refers to “coloured people other than Indians and Natives,” but further clarification is not provided.

Main Article

References
  1. Nishiura  H. Epidemiology of a primary pneumonic plague in Kantoshu, Manchuria, from 1910 to 1911: statistical analysis of individual records collected by the Japanese Empire. Int J Epidemiol. 2006;35:1059–65. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  2. Hinckley  AF, Biggerstaff  BJ, Griffith  KS, Mead  PS. Transmission dynamics of primary pneumonic plague in the USA. Epidemiol Infect. 2012;140:554–60. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  3. Bertherat  E, Thullier  P, Shako  JC, England  K, Koné  ML, Arntzen  L, et al. Lessons learned about pneumonic plague diagnosis from two outbreaks, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Emerg Infect Dis. 2011;17:778–84. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  4. Wang  H, Cui  Y, Wang  Z, Wang  X, Guo  Z, Yan  Y, et al. A dog-associated primary pneumonic plague in Qinghai Province, China. Clin Infect Dis. 2011;52:185–90. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  5. Egan  JR. A plague on five of your houses—statistical re-assessment of three pneumonic plague outbreaks that occurred in Suffolk, England, between 1906 and 1918. Theor Biol Med Model. 2010;7:39–49. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  6. Inglesby  TV, Dennis  DT, Henderson  DA, Bartlett  JG, Ascher  MS, Eitzen  E, et al.; Working Group on Civilian Biodefense. Plague as a biological weapon: medical and public health management. JAMA. 2000;283:2281–90. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  7. Galimand  M, Guiyoule  A, Gerbaud  G, Rasoamanana  B, Chanteau  S, Carniel  E, et al. Multidrug resistance in Yersinia pestis mediated by a transferable plasmid. N Engl J Med. 1997;337:677–80. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  8. Report upon the outbreak of plague on the Witwatersrand March 18th to July 31st, 1904. Johannesburg (South Africa): Angus Printing and Publishing Company Ltd.; 1905.
  9. Harrison  P, Zack  T. The power of mining: the fall of gold and rise of Johannesburg. J Contemp Afr Stud. 2012;30:551–70. DOIGoogle Scholar
  10. Howard  P. Mahatma Gandhi under the plague spotlight. In: B. Poonam, editor. Medicine and Colonialism, Historical Perspectives in India and South Africa. London: Taylor and Frances; 2015.
  11. Beavon  K. Johannesburg: the making and shaping of the city. Pretoria (South Africa): University of South Africa Press; Pretoria. 2004. p. 49.
  12. Demissie  F. In the shadow of the gold mines: migrancy and mine housing in South Africa. Housing Stud. 1998;13:445–69. DOIGoogle Scholar
  13. Nathan  E. A report on pneumonia at the Premier Mine. Transvaal Medical Journal (SAMJ). 1907 Feb;(2):154–59.
  14. Anonymous . Plague in the Transvaal. BMJ. 1904;2:93–4. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  15. Cori  A, Ferguson  NM, Fraser  C, Cauchemez  S. A new framework and software to estimate time-varying reproduction numbers during epidemics. Am J Epidemiol. 2013;178:1505–12. https://sourceforge.net/projects/episerve/. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  16. Höhle  M. Statistical methods for infectious diseases. Statistical methods for interpreting the epidemic curve of the STEC 0104:H4 outbreak in Germany, 2011 [cited 2017 Oct 30]. http://statistics.open.ac.uk/SMID/abstracts.htm
  17. Höhle  M, Meyer  S, Paul  M. 2014 surveillance: temporal and spatio-temporal modelling and monitoring of epidemic phenomena. R package version 1.8–0 [cited 2017 Oct 30]. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/surveillance/index.html
  18. Nishiura  H. Backcalculation of the disease-age specific frequency of secondary transmission of primary pneumonic plague. Asian Pac J Trop Med. 2008;1:25–9.
  19. Bramdaw  D, editor. The South African Indian who’s who and commercial directory. London: Reuters; 1936–37.
  20. Phillips  H. Locating the location of a South African location: the paradoxical pre-history of Soweto. Urban Hist. 2014;41:311–32. DOIGoogle Scholar
  21. Joshi  K, Thakur  JS, Kumar  R, Singh  AJ, Ray  P, Jain  S, et al. Epidemiological features of pneumonic plague outbreak in Himachal Pradesh, India. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 2009;103:455–60. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  22. Kool  JL. Risk of person-to-person transmission of pneumonic plague. Clin Infect Dis. 2005;40:1166–72. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  23. Faye  O, Boëlle  PY, Heleze  E, Faye  O, Loucoubar  C, Magassouba  N, et al. Chains of transmission and control of Ebola virus disease in Conakry, Guinea, in 2014: an observational study. Lancet Infect Dis. 2015;15:320–6. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar

Main Article

Page created: December 19, 2017
Page updated: December 19, 2017
Page reviewed: December 19, 2017
The conclusions, findings, and opinions expressed by authors contributing to this journal do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Public Health Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the authors' affiliated institutions. Use of trade names is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by any of the groups named above.
file_external