Chapter IV.]
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE MONSOON CHOLERA OF 1875.
293
registered only 52 deaths in all, and most of these towards the end of the year when renewed
invasion from the north might have been looked for.
The deaths of Malabar, 10 in number, spread over the first six months of 1875, may
also be excluded, since they are in all probability due to error in registration.
From January to the end of May four districts of the Madras Presidency were affected,
Tanjore, Tinnevelly, Trichinopoly and South Arcot. Tanjore registered 1,667 deaths, and the
remaining three districts 64 deaths only between them.
All the remaining area of the Presidency was absolutely free from cholera.
In June four new districts got cholera—Madura and Coimbatore adjoining the already
occupied area, and Chingleput and Cuddapah further to the north. Madura registered a
single case on the 10th June; Coimbatore 60 deaths in three circles, beginning on 8th, 16th to
28th ; Chingleput 3 deaths in two circles on 7th and 22nd June ; and Cuddapah 31 deaths
in three circles, commencing on 3rd, 14th and 23rd June.
Between 1st and 15th July two districts were added to the epidemic area—Salem in the
south, and Nellore in the north—and gave respectively before the end of July, 135 and 151
deaths. Four circles of Salem were affected between 1st and 17th.
In Nellore, absolutely removed as regards geographical continuity from the suffering
districts of Southern India and now first invaded, five circles were entered on these days of July
—
15th, 19th, 24th, 25th, 25th; and this was the first intimation and the true index of the monsoon
cholera, destined to cover half the Presidency within a fortnight.
It is most interesting thus to see the monsoon area differentiated in two successive epide
m i c s :
In his report on the epidemic of 1872, Mr. Cornish writes : "In January and February
of 1872 there were indications of a movement of cholera in
the endemic region of the Orissa country, and the extension of
the disease to our northernmost district of Ganjam appeared
to be imminent. The epidemic began in March in the zemin
-
daries which lie to the north and near to the parts of the Orissa country already affected. In
April cholera was reported from the Vizagapatam district. In June the epidemic had extended
to the Godavery district. In August there appeared slight traces of the epidemic in the
Kistna district, and also in Nellore, but beyond this latter district there was no southern
progress. Since April 1872, the population south of the Kistna river has been practically free
of epidemic cholera."
I need scarcely remark that this tract, which corresponds absolutely with the area depicted
in the diagram illustrating monsoon influences on page 65 of my original report, is a naturally
defined area, and the influences affecting it were well and accurately described by Scot in
treating of the meteorology of the year 1818.*
The cholera of 1872 came down to the borders of the Ellore taluq.
The Officiating Sanitary Commissioner for Madras takes up in 1875 the converse of this
history, although with no intention of pointing its significance.
He writes : "The course has been described of an epidemic advancing westward, north-
westward and northward. At the end of the year it had reached the southern part of the
Kistna district. All above the Ellore taluq was free. Between this district and Ganjam the
Vizagapatam district is interposed, and in it no cholera appeared in 1875. It is certain, there
-
fore, that the Ganjam epidemic is not connected with that of the south, and was imported
from the north."
When the Sanitary Commissioner for Madras states it to be an obvious fact, that his epi
-
demic of 1875 came from the south-east, the observation is
that of a local observer. As an observer on a wider scale, I
reckon this to be the statement of a theory merely, and not,
what the Sanitary Commissioner claims for it, sound material for theory as to the origin and
manner of propagation of cholera.
Mr. Cornish has well appreciated the facts attending the invasion of Madras from the
north, in his résumé collecting together the results in 1818 and many succeeding epide
-
mics ;† and I do not doubt that he will recognise and record as parallel the events of 1875. Mr.
Cornish, writing in 1870, rightly disclaims the idea that the tract of Southern India, the same
in which cholera first re-appeared in 1875, is more than a habitat which localises epidemic cholera
and fosters it when localised. The conditions here afforded to cholera approach in fact in
character to those of the endemic area of Bengal. "If left to itself," he adds, "the cholera of
Tanjore and Triehinopoly would soon die out. It is the importation of new seed, so to speak,
into these localities that gives strength to the cholera and causes them to be reputed as cholera
centres."That this area localised, in common with the northern districts of Bombay, an air-
borne cholera in the end of 1874, or in the spring of 1875, is the theoretical view which I
adopt, to account for the fact of the spring manifestation and of the diffusion of cholera over
Southern India before July 20th, when the new wave entered from the west.
The earliest districts of Madras affected in 1818 in the manifestation of monsoon cholera
were those bordering on the tract in the north-east, which
defines itself as a separate province. Between the 5th and 10th
July 1818 the invasion occurred, on the very days on which the
monsoon manifestation of the same year occurred in Aurungabad, Jaulnah, Khandesh and Pundur -
pore in the Bombay Presidency. The dates given are—Ellore, 5th July ; Masulipatam, 10th
* Quoted at page 72 of my original report.
† C h o l e r a R e p o r t o f 1 8 7 0 , p a g e s 3 t o 6 .
The tract in the north-east a na
-tural area, and exhibited as such
by the distribution of cholera in
1872 and 1875.
How and whence the cholera of
the monsoon of 1875 moved on the
Madras Presidency.
The invasion of July 1818, as
illustrative.
4 B