The plague of China is the name of the last Pandémie of known Peste. It started in 1894 with HongKong and touched seventy-seven ports on the five continents in ten years.

It was at the time of this epidemic that Alexandre Yersin discovered the Bacille responsible for this disease, but it still took a few years to include/understand the role of the chips infecting the rats in the transmission of the plague, with the observations of Paul-Louis Simond in 1898 and work of Bacot and Martin in 1914.

Madagascar, the Japan and the Portugal were reached in 1889, Sydney and San Francisco the following year, then Java in 1910, Ceylon in 1914, and the France in 1920.

The number of victims was tiny room in the countries developed thanks to the protection measures taken, with for example forty dead only with Marseilles and Paris. On the other hand the sources indicate approximately 50.000 dead in Mandchourie in 1910-1911, and on the whole ten million died in India during all first half of the 20th century.

See too

• List of the epidemics of plague