One flea is recorded as having been once taken on an anthropoid ape (a gorilla), and is the “jigger,” Pulex penetrans. This is a very serious pest, the history of which shows how man himself opens up the path by which dangerous diseases spread. The jigger-flea was originally known only in the South American tropics. It spread from there to the West Indies in the last century. It burrows into the skin, usually between the toes, but elsewhere also, and causes an abscess and sore as big and deep as a hazel-nut. Several such cavities at a time are dangerous, and often lead to blood-poisoning and death. Europeans avoid the burrowing of the jigger by having their toes carefully examined every morning, but black men are less careful. From the West Indies, about thirty years ago, the jigger was carried in ships to West Africa. There it flourished and spread from village to village across Central Africa, decimating the population. It appears to have been carried to a large extent by dogs, in whose skin it flourishes. It has now passed through Africa to India, and we shall no doubt soon hear of its having completed the circuit of the globe.

A great many kinds of fleas are known, many furry animals having their own special species, which does not leave them to take up its dwelling on other kinds of animal. The common rat has a large flea of its own, which apparently is not the flea which carries the plague from rats to men. It is a “wandering” flea which does this, namely, the Cheops flea. This flea, common in the East but unknown in colder regions, does not stay as one could wish it to do—on the rat; but travels about visiting human beings and dogs, and so carries the plague bacillus from rats to men. In the absence of these fleas plague would be a rat-disease unknown in men. It is probable that we do not nowadays live so thoroughly cheek-by-jowl with rats in Western Europe as formerly, so that even if rats infected with plague and harbouring the Eastern Cheops flea arrive in our docks, the wandering flea is too far off to reach us in our modern houses.