298
EPIDEMIC CHOLERA OF INDIA OF 1875 AND 1876.
[ Section IV.
The north-eastern districts,—Ganjam, Vizagapatam and Godavery, in common with Orissa,
The increase over Madras at this
time may have been only that nor-
mal for the season, and related to a
cholera already present.
or spread, of cholera. But from Nellore downwards every district of the east coast and every
district of Southern India developed this cholera of the north-east monsoon. A single glance at
the death-table of 1876 will suggest that this great renewal of cholera was but a revitalisa-
tion of a cholera persistent in the same districts throughout 1876, falling to a minimum in Sep-
tember and October, and increasing in intensity with seasonal influences, just as in 1818.
But it is at least worth suggesting, that a new body of cholera from Eastern Bengal may
have reinforced the invading body of 1875 in October 1876, coincident with the epidemic
manifestation over the endemic area. If cholera progressed by human agency, we might admit
that the fact of the connecting area, Orissa and Ganjam, being uncovered was opposed to the
suggestion. But with the history of the occupation of India in the spring of 1875 to guide us,
the possibility of renewed invasion may be admitted, although the indices be few, since the
material for invasion, the vehicle and the directing agency, were all provided in 1876.
In connection with this, it is very curious, and probably significant, to find the medical offi-
showed no increase of cholera at this time, a natural pheno-
menon consistently observed in the registration of the last
seven years. Mysore and Coorg, the Neilgherries, Madras
and South Canara showed no tendency to encourage the growth,
Shadow of cholera in the Central
Provinces at this time.
cers of eight districts of the Central Provinces noting in their
jail returns of this period, the circumstance that cholera had
shown itself. Had this cholera been usual at the season or con-
fined to one or two districts, it might have been of little import. But the wide diffusion and
the abnormal appearance of cholera in twelve circles of the Akola district of the Berars at the
same time—the first cases of the year—point to the possibility of the movement over this area
of a new body of cholera, at the usual date of invasion—a movement with which the Bombay
cholera of 1877 may be associated, which has caused 2,500 deaths in the city of Bombay alone.
It is right to state that the Sanitary Commissioner for the Central Provinces is inclined
to attribute to this cholera a local significance merely, regarding it as a cholera radiating from
the Ramtek fair, where the people assembled were attacked at this time.
In Banda also, which I am always inclined to regard as an index station, a localised out-
Banda cholera of October 1876.
break in the Madras Regiment, commencing on 16th October
1876, occurred; and in this and the adjoining districts, cholera
was localised up to September 1877.
What would seem to favor the suggestion of renewal in the case of Bombay is the circum-
stance, that the great bulk of the cholera mortality of 1876 was
confined to the area invaded with the monsoon of 1875, and
that cholera did not reappear in vigour in the districts which it
evacuated in the spring of 1875 ; Khandesh, for example, which
lost its cholera in August 1875, registered only 29 deaths in 1876, against 6,224 in 1875.
Cholera was reproduced in 1876 over the whole area occupied in 1875, but the features, when
reproduced, were those of a declining epidemic, and it is contrary to experience that a cholera
which in its second year has showed such characteristics shall in the third year of invasion
blaze up, as did this cholera of Bombay of 1877.
Central Area of the Bombay Presidency, invaded in the Spring of 1875.
Khandesh
CHOLERA DEATHS OF 1875 AND 1876 CONTRACTED.
1875.
Year of invasion.
1876.
Year of reproduction.
6,224
29
Nassik
2,812
333
Ahmednagar
4,933
1,115
Poona
.
4,649
719
Tanna
5,969
693
Colaba
1,453
70
The force of the cholera of 1876 was, in fact, thrown upon the districts invaded with the
monsoon of 1875, and chiefly those occupied latest in the year. Belgaum, Dharwar, Kaladgi
, a n d
K a n a r ag
a v e 1 8 , 0 0 0 d e a t h s ; a n d S a t a r a a n d S h o l a p o r e a d j o i n i n g u p w a r d s o f4
, 0 0 0
d e a t h s ,
out of a total for the Presidency of 32,000. A normal revitalisation in the spring gave 6,274
deaths towards the total in the five northern districts—Surat, Broach, Kaira, panch Mahals,
and Ahmedabad. Thur and Parkur, in which 6 cholera deaths had occurred in 1875, gave 88
cholera deaths in the same months of 1876. But no cholera death was registered throughout
Scinde in 1876, a circumstance to be taken into account when we cone to ask whence came
the cholera of Candahar of April 1876, and the cholera of April from which our troops
suffered so heavily in the Bolan Pass. The deaths registered as occurring in Scinde in
November and December 1875, 43 in number, occurred at Ghorabari on the coast, and
seem to have occurred in an isolated outbreak, and may or may not have been significant of the
passage of cholera towards the west.
In the North-Western Provinces the aspect of the cholera of 1876 was altogether that of
Aspect of cholera in Bombay in
1876. Was the cholera of the spring
of 1877 of the Deccan, a new
cholera ?
Aspect of the cholera of 1876 in
the North-Western Provinces and
Oudh.
a second-year cholera, and not of a cholera of invasion. 1 was
much struck with this facies of cholera in making up the jail
statistics of this great area. The entire jail administration of
Outh and the North-Western Provinces gave but a single cholera death in 1876; and yet