182
STATISTICS OF THE JAIL POPULATION OF BENGAL FROM 1859 TO 1876.
[Section III.
the influence of the canal, although all are ready to admit the benefits that it otherwise confers
upon the place and people."
In 1834, writes Dr. Garden, fever was again terribly prevalent. The fever of this epoch
is the epidemic which I associate with the typhus which for
years after prevailed over Upper India. This fever of 1834 was
also provinciallly distributed. It raged over Western Rajpootana (Ranken, p. 39), and I find that
179 deaths occurred among the native troops in Nusseerabad, Neemuch and Mhow. The
Superintending Surgeon of Neemuch says, that the fever began in August at Nusseerabad and
rapidly extended over Rajpootana, and the influence was partially felt as far south as Mhow. At
Nusseerabad and Neemuch the sick of some corps exceeded one-third of the strength. In
November, with the setting-in of the cold weather, the disease declined. What was called scurvy,
was universal over the same tract in I 833-35, and the Pali plague appeared in 1836. The great
famine of 1837 followed in the North-West, and from 1836 to 1838 there is a continuous record
of the existence of typhus and relapsing fevers. Judging from parallel history, I take this to
be the manifestation in Upper India of the deadly remittent of Twining and Martin, so fatal
to the European community of Calcutta in 1833
.
The fever of 1843-44 was universal over Northern India. In Southern Scinde it
did not prevail in power; for we are told expressly that
the 78th reached Sukker from Kurrachee in good health
on 25th October 1844, and that the regiment remained healthy until the beginning of Novem
-ber, when the fever burst forth with unheard-of violence. General Napier, in his review of
the Administration of Sir C. Napier in Scinde, writes : "Sir C. Napier arrived at Sukker on
the 19th December. But no joyful state of affairs greeted his arrival. The pestilence was
abroad, the European Artillery was entirely disabled, two hundred of the 78th dead, and others
daily falling into their graves that seemed destined to swallow all. With anguish of mind
their General was compelled to send the survivors to Hyderabad, instead of leading the whole,
as he had hoped, to a glorious service. Nor did even this save them, and nearly as many more
perished ere the sickness ceased."* Sir Charles Napier, writing on 19th December, says : "I
have lost the 78th; that beautiful regiment arrived here in high health, and every other
part of Scinde† was healthy; but the first week in November they began to grow sickly, and
here they are bodily in hospital, and about 200 dead,—men, women, and children."
But this malaria was not confined to the west of the epidemic province. It was localised
almost as powerfully in Kurnaul, as at Sukker. Kurnaul, long known as a healthy station, was
finally abandoned on account of the localisation of this very malaria; and it was on account of
this same epidemic that Dempster's Committee was appointed to inquire into the causes localis
- i n g m a l a r i a t o t h e w e s t o f D e l h i .
The fever of 1844 re-appeared in the monsoon season of 1845 and 1846. The following
quotation tells of the state of the excellent and non-malarious cantonment of Umballa under
the influence of the epidemic malaria of 1846. Dr. Logan, then Surgeon of Her Majesty''s
53rd Regiment, writes : "Fever infested the corps for nearly two months. The latter part of
August and earlier part of September was a period of most oppressive sickness. Intermittents
became very numerous; remittent fevers also assumed a severe and malignant form evincing all
the especial and urgent symptoms of the bilious remittent fever of the tropics, with early acces
- s i o n o f c e r e b r a l d i s t u r b a n c e , a n d c o n g e s t i o n s o f t h e l i v e r a n d s p l e e n . S e v e r a l c a s e s w e r e a t t e n d e d
with universal tinge of the skin and conjunctivæ, in varying shades from a faint yellow to
deep saffron. Remittent has been the fatal form of fever, and forty-seven casualties have been
numbered thereby. In these the duration of the disease was various, from the abbreviated career
of four or five days, to the lingering course of a month. In the former, speedy congestion of the
brain terminated in early and fatal effusion, and in instances of the latter the patient became
slowly worn and emaciated and died in low delirium."
The same epidemic in progress from the east is indicated in the medical history of Her
Majesty's 29th Regiment stationed at Ghazeepore.
On 11th and 12th Augus‡ 1844, the Surgeon of the Regiment first took the alarm. At
this date the fever cases assumed an indistinct remitting form. Up to the 19th, the date of
the reporting letter from which I quote, 97 cases had been treated, of which 9 were fatal, and
others were likely soon to terminate in death. Sixteen deaths occurred before the end of the
month, and the foundation was laid of deadly sickness extending into the cold season.
All of these epidemics, seem, like cholera, to have had their origin in the east of India
— 1 8 0 8 , 1 8 1 6 , 1 8 2 6 - 2 7 , 1 8 3 3 , a n d 1 8 4 4 b e i n g t h e g r e a t f e v e r y e a r s i n t h e G a n g e t i c p r o v i n c e s ;
and the deadly bilious remittent type distinguishes all. The yellow fever was not a typhus,
since it raged and cut off the population during the months in which typhus is extinct or in a
state of decay, and died off at the season when typhus commences its epidemic career.
The epidemics of malaria in succession from this period onwards, have been treated of in
my Cholera Reports of 1868, 1869, and 1872—namely, the
epidemic of 1850-51, of 1863, of 1866-67, and of 1869-70.
I should like to have gone over the same ground again, in order to show that the fevers
of these periods were truly epidemic in the sense which I have attached to the term. But
S p a c e w i l l n o t p e r m i t .
Thus I read the epidemic history of the malaria covering Northern and Western India by
invasion from the east. I cannot undertake to point out the
endemic home from which these fevers have issued. In the
future, when parallel epidemics are in progress, as will undoubt
-
* Napier's Administration of Scinde, p. 159. † That is, Southern Scinde.
‡The same days on which epidemic malaria has appeared over Upper India on so many occasions.
Epidemic of 1834.
Epidemic of 1844.
Epidemics from 1850 onwards.
Association of the fever of Lower
Bengal with the fever of Upper
India.