Chapter II.]
RE-OCCUPATION OF THE EPIDEMIC AREA IN THE SPRING OF 1875.
281
•
Just as at Nasik, and in the same week, an outbreak occurred at Jaleysur in the Agra
district, in anticipation of the cholera due three weeks later ; and between the 12th and 15th
April, the indices showing the existence of the repressed cholera appeared, Saint Peter's College,
which suffered in the preceding epidemic, again showing the earliest predisposition to the
attack.
In the Central Provinces with the exception of the Tapti and Western Nerbudda districts
on the west, and in the Raipur and Bilaspur districts in the east
Area of repression in the Central
Provinces.
-which are naturally associated with the cholera of Beno-d up to
b` 5
the end of May the cholera registration was nearly a blank
Jubbulpore gave 2 deaths, Murwara, in the Vindhyan tract, 18 ; and Betul 12. This cholera
spread neither in Jubbulpore nor Murwara, and Betul did not register another case until July.
Jubbulpore, the great railway centre, tapping the cholera-stricken Nerbudda Valley oh the one
hand and the cholera•stricken Gangetic Valley on the other, returned for the whole of 1875,
11 deaths only out of a resident population of 3S3,000, and this not as a consequence of
the inability of cholera to localise itself, for this same district lost nearly 8,000 of its population
in the epidemic of 1868-69.
While the N erbudda and Tapti districts immediately to the north suffered throughout
April and May, the cholera of May affected two only of the
Repression in four districts of the
Berars.
six districts of the Berars, and these the most westerly. Not a
single death was registered in the four remaining districts lying
to the east—Basim, Amraoti, Ellichpur, `and Wun.
In the north of the Bombay Presidency the spring cholera had firmly established itself,
eograiThy of the spring. cholera ing
adapt-
G
hie, its manifestation to the local influences, the parallel manifesta-
of Bombay.
tion being delayed by a month as compared with that of Oudh and.
the valley of the Gauges. From Ahmedabad in the north to
Poona in the south, cholera was universal in April and May, and no district escaped. Ratnagiri
afforded. 11 deaths, and Sholapur a single fatal case in April and May ; and, with these excep-
tions, not one death was registered in any district farther south, and Sind to the west abso-
lutely escaped until November, with the reservation that one death did occur at Kurrachee in
July.*
Leaving out 10 deaths in Malabar spread over the first six months of 1875, and evidently
The area in Western and South- due to erroneous registration—no death from cholera was re-
ern India which was unoccupied by corded in any district between the occupied area of Bombay
spring cholera. and the districts occupied in Southern India. In none of these
districts of Bombay or Madras did cholera show itself before the setting-in of the monsoon
and the alternative is, to reckon that cholera moved upon them with the monsoon influence, or
that the repression over this tract was absolute up to the last ten days of June.
These actual facts regarding the repression of the cholera of 1875 within areas, or the ab-
sence of the materies from areas subsequently covered, clear the ground for the consideration of
the next question—When did the cholera, 'distributed as here recorded, come into active epidemic
existence and move upon areas previously free ?
I have spoken of the localisation of cholera in Goruckpore
Goruckpore and Busti, the tract first
affected by the new epidemic. The and Busti from July 1874 onwards, when all the rest of India
aspect in this tract of the cholera of beyond the endemic area was free irom cholera. The deaths
the end of 1874 and spring of 1875.
of the months were as under
June.
July.
August.
September.
October.
November.
December.
0
17
161
1,278
3,393
689
39
In January and February 1875 not a single death was registered. Cholera re-appeared in
March, and the mortality ran thus :—
March.
April.
May.
June.
July.
August.
311
2,457
1,719
1,082
443
100
Nineteen cholera deaths in all occurred in the province of Oudh from September to
December 1874, and 16 of these, which occurred in Fyzabad in November and December
and to which I have already referred, I reckon to have been the precursors of the epidemic
cholera of 1875. In all Oudh north of the Gogra, one of the most deadly cholera tracts of
India and geographically continuous, there was not a single cholera death in the late months
of 1874, when Busti and Goruekpore were suffering; and Jaunpore to the south, out of a
population of a million, registered only 4 deaths from July to December 1874.
We know from experience.that the earliest appearance of cholera in Eastern and Northern
Oudh takes place, as the rule, about the 20th February, and that
The re-invasion of Oudh.
the 20th March is for the same tract the date of general
epidemic appearance, anticipating by a month the cholera due to appear elsewhere on 20th
April.
This has to be taken into account when we are told that cholera has been imported.
* The single outbreak in Sind, which resulted in 42 deaths, was confined to one registration circle of the Kurrachet;
district.
X