The knowledge that infectious diseases could be spread from one human to another by insects and that infection could be derived from animals, brought public health into scientific scrutiny.
The outbreak also led to further improvements being made to the North Head Quarantine Station as the value of segregating infected patients from the populace had been realised.
[2] They adopted the theory of the French doctor, Paul-Louis Simond, now generally accepted, that the disease was communicated to man by fleas from infected rats.
His general conclusion was that "the best protection against epidemic plague lies in sufficient sanitary laws persistently and faithfully executed during the absence of the disease".
He delivered an address on plague at the 1906 meeting of the American Medical Association held at Boston, and was asked to write a description of the disease for Gould and Pyle's Cyclopedia of Medicine, issued in U.S.A.