EPIDEMIC CHOLERA OF INDIA OF 1875 AND 1876.
[Section IV.
310
In the cholera history of the province, which we have been studying as typical, we find
counterstatements made such as the following:
The Hurdwar pilgrims carried cholera into Mooltan in
1867; and the circumstance that Mooltan has become a great
railway terminus is certain to destroy the known immunity which Mooltan has enjoyed for half
a century.
The answer is, that from January 1868 to December 1875, a period of eight years, out of
a population exceeding one million in Mooltan, Mozuffergarh, and Dera Ghazi Khan, the
districts reached by the railway communications, 17 deaths from cholera were registered, the
Punjab having been invaded by epidemic cholera in 1869, 1872 and 1875.
In the epidemic of 1869 cholera became localised in Amritsar, and 3,041 people died in the
city; the entire Lahore district in the same period registered under 300 deaths. Panic suggested
that here were evident local conditions, such as would cause Amritsar to become a local centre
from which cholera would in the future radiate by human agency. In the immediately su
c - c e e d i n g e p i d e m i c o f 1 8 7 2 , A m r i t s a r C i t y r e g i s t e r e d 7 c h o l e r a d e a t h s o u t o f a p o p u l a t i o n o f
134,000.
In 1867, the Meean Meer cantonment suffered heavily; in the great epidemic of 1869 it
escaped altogether. The inference was made, that the water-supply had been so secured from
contamination that the outbreak of cholera in the future was not to be dreaded.
The very next epidemic of 1872 swept down on the cantonment, and 185 cases occurred
in a strength of 1,300, of which 123 were fatal.
In the epidemic of 1869, the Lahore Lunatic Asylum lost 33 out of a strength of 200
inmates. No other community at Lahore suffered in any such ratio.
The conclusion arrived at was, that the sand through which the drinking-water of the
lunatics passed had been impregnated with cholera evacuations.
Among the very first to suffer in the epidemic of 1872 were these same lunatics. Out
of a strength of 273, 39 were attacked and 25 died. None of the attendants on the sick
were attacked.
In the epidemic of 1875 the city of Lahore registered 37 deaths from cholera in all. Out of
a strength of 275 lunatics in the asylum, there were 27 cases and 19 deaths. Out of 27 keepers,
none were attacked.
It is not likely that the contingency of sand-poisoning should have occurred in three
successive epidemics; and the Sanitary Commissioner for the Punjab does not urge this
theory in writing of the outbreak of 1875.
It is not expedient to continue these illustrations, or else I might refer to the experience
of Simla in 1875, and many other examples, to show how vain is prediction based on inade
-quate theory, and how sanitary effects, good and laudable in themselves, may avail but little when
the one proposition is overlooked, that in dealing with a moving cholera, sanitation must be
directed against the inevitable. Sound theory must be superadded to the highest local efforts.
It is however essential that I should not allow to pass without notice the remarks which
Dr. DeRenzy has thought it necessary to introduce as a preamble to his "Report on the Punjab
Cholera of 1875." These show a steady persistence in denying what I deem it of prime
importance to promulgate. Dr. DeRenzy writes:
"In former days it was not at all uncommon to hear of cholera unexpectedly sweeping down
on places with the swiftness of a hurricane, and causing all at once wide-spread mortality.
There were no such cases in the late epidemic, the reason being, I imagine, because the pro
-gress of the disease is now more correctly traced and recorded, and the early beginnings of
epidemics, which in former days were entirely overlooked, are now at once brought to notice.
Cholera is now seen to resemble other communicable diseases in beginning its career in a
place on a very small scale, and then extending the sphere of its operations slowly or rapidly
according to the facilities afforded to it for diffusion, and, after attaining its climax of develop
-ment like other communicable diseases, from some unknown cause it languishes and dies. It will
be seen at a glance that there was no wave-like progress of the disease, no simultaneous
advance, climax and retreat. Cholera in the Punjab is essentially a disease of the hot weather,
and the months of August and September are the periods when it thrives best; but so far as
the history of the last four epidemics shows, it never evinces that steady progress in a
particular direction that has been ascribed to it."
In these sentences two distinct things are mixed up—the occupation of an area, and the
diffusion of cholera within the area occupied. But, taken even as it stands, the impression
conveyed to the reader is, that the phenomena attending the occupation of the Punjab and
the successive advance over its different areas are those of a communicable disease spread by the
human being, and that the cholera of the Punjab has no other aspect. The history of
1875, I have written upon Dr. DeRenzy's own facts, and the history of cholera, in the
Punjab for the last twenty years is well known to the Sanitary Commissioner.
W e c o m e t o c o n c l u s i o n s d i a m e t r i c a l l y o p p o s i t e o n t h e s a m e f a c t s . T h e p a r a l l e l s w h i c h t e a c h s o
much have been thrown aside, as interfering with a theory which cannot afford to take notice of
them. In writing of 1875, the Sanitary Commissioner might at least have made an exception
of the occupation of the Himalayas, and have shown how, virtually on the same days, the beacon
fires were simultaneously lit on the tops of the mountains at Dhurmsala, Simla, and Kussowli,
to which in the far-off Deccan and in the Berars, on the southern margin of the epidemic area
occupied, the epidemic at the very same moment blazed out in response under one and the same
natural influence.
Inadequate theory is always apt
to lead on to erroneous deduction.