_Plague._—The similarity in clinical symptomatology, in gross pathology and the apparent similarity in manner of spread and epidemic features between influenza and the pneumonic form of plague has suggested to some that the best comparison should be made with the latter disease. Here again is a disease which is endemic in Asia and spreads elsewhere only at intervals. If we go back into the history of the plague we will discover that formerly it was distributed more or less throughout the civilized world. The plague is supposed to have been known to the children of Israel at the time of the exodus from Egypt. The Egypt of the Pharaohs was a country of great salubrity. Hygienic measures were excellent. The inhabitants built aqueducts, disposed of their dead hygienically, reared temples, maintained law and order, developed the elements of literature and science and devised and employed simple machinery. But as early as the exodus, Egypt had lost its salubrity. This is indicated by many passages in the Bible. The plague was present in that country during this period. Sticker believes that the pest among the Philistines spoken of in the First Book of Samuel, when the captured army was returned with five golden emerods and five golden mice, was the bubonic plague. Thucydides describes a plague in Athens occurring before Christ. This is generally believed to have been “the plague.” The time of the earliest appearance of the disease in Italy is not known but it was well established there in the first century of our era. The plague was endemic in Italy at that time and it developed in epidemic form with each increase in susceptible material. At about 68 A.D. the disease spread over the whole of Asia, Northern Africa and Europe. Exacerbations of the disease are described in the years 80, 88 and 92 A.D. In Rome they occurred in 102, 107 and 117 A.D. The disease was present in Wales in 114 A.D. In 167 an unusually severe outbreak of the plague occurred in Rome. There were other outbreaks in the Roman army in 173, 175 and 178. Had we the space to record here the history of the plague we would find that the disease was widely distributed throughout Europe for several hundreds of years, that it was particularly prevalent in certain areas and that at intervals it spread from one or a few foci, throughout the continent.