????"Compilation on the Plague", the first and most authoritative book worldwide on this rat-transmitted disease, was accidentally recovered when an old house was dismantled in Ningbo in east China's Zhejiang province.

????The book was written by a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) doctor called Luo Zhiyuan when he was trying to deal with a vicious plague that swept over Guangdong province, in south China, in the year 1890, and caught hundreds of thousands of people with the disease.

????The book, containing about 30,000 characters, tells of exactly how to diagnose the disease, how to avoid and treat the diseases.

????A great deal of China's advanced level in plague treatment is attributed to this specialized book.

????Since the book went missing, academics have only been able to follow traces and parts left in other books and therefore failed to fully understand the plague as described in the original book.

(Xinhua 11/07/2000)