Chapter I.1
THE DYING OUT OP CHOLERA OVER HINDUSTAN IN 1873 AND 1874.
275
recorded in the six months. But in the latter six months 5,000 people were carried off in
these two districts. This cholera was almost entirely localised. Azimgurh, lying next to
Goruckpore, was slightly affected, losing 250 ; and the Fyzabad district of Oudh, bounding
the cholera tract on the west, had 16 deaths in November and December, which I should
attribute to a new epidemic distribution of cholera late in 1874. Leaving out these 16 deaths,
the province of Oudh had 3 deaths only during the time that the adjoining districts were
affected; and Jaunpore immediately to the south had only 2 deaths amongst its population.
In the districts lying between Oudh and the Central Provinces, 52 deaths only appear in
the registers of 1874 :—
Allahabad. .
.
. 15
Humeerpore .
.
.
. 1
Cawnpore.
.
Futtehpore.
.
.
. 23
.
.
4
Jaloun .
.
.
Jhansi .
.
.
.
. 2
.
. 0
Banda.
.
.
.
7
Lullutpore
.
.
.
. 0
In the Central Provinces the history is the same ; 2 deaths appear in the register, as
occurring at Nursingpore in June and July.
In the registration of the Berars 2 deaths also appear, which the Sanitary Commissioner
did not authenticate after personal enquiry.
Taking for granted that the deaths of the Bombay Presidency of the first six months of
1873 represent the natural termination of the cholera of 1872,
Bombay Presidency.
we find a total of 29 deaths remaining, representing the cholera
mortality of the last six months of 1873, in the whole Bombay Presidency, of which 20 were
registered in Bombay city. Thirty-seven deaths from cholera are said to have occurred in the
Bombay Presidency in 1874.
Madras Presidency. Why the
The Sanitary Commissioner for Madras emphatically repeats
cholera of 1872 did not extend.
the same history of exemption in his report for 1873.
The Bengal cholera, invading in 1872, occupied a certain area only of the Madras Presi-
General features of the cholera of dency. It did not overpass the same limit in 1873. What
1872, ou the southern epidemic cholera did occur in the Madras Presidency was but a locally
tract.
manifested cholera carried on from 1872. Of a total of 810
cholera deaths registered throughout the Presidency, 497 occurred in the one district of Nellore,
and 178 in the districts to the north ; leaving, for the whole of the Presidency besides, 165 deaths.
" It would be useless," he says, " to enter into any speculations as to the causes of the
arrest of a great epidemic wave. After considering the fact in many aspects, I must confess
myself utterly ignorant as to the why and the wherefore of this abortive epidemic movement."
This much we may infer, that if any portion of the epidemic cholera of 1872 of the
Central Provinces did reach the Madras Presidency it was but a very trifling offshoot of the
great body of cholera which found its true exit in Northern India and towards the Caspian, as
shown in my report on the cholera of the year. The phenomenon recalls the epidemic
distribution of 1867, when cholera extended from Orissa to Caubul, confined to the northern
highway and with a clearly defined southern edge throughout its entire course, which the
cholera of the year found it impossible to overleap. It is not behind a limit so shaded off that
cholera falls and awaits revitalisation.
On the southern epidemic highway, the cholera of the Central Provinces of 1872, was as
nothing when compared with the epidemics of 1860, 1861-05 and 1868-00.
In the earliest of these epidemics the population was decimated; and in 1869, 56,000 per-
sons succumbed to the epidemic. In the epidemic of 1872, which was as truly an invading
cholera as that of the former years, we have to show but 1,592 deaths for the same area.
It seems to me that the Madras Presidency was but little affected through the route of
the Central Provinces in 1872. Had invasion occurred, the facies of the death-table -for the
Presidency would have been different. As it stands, it is divided naturally into two divisions—
the cholera of the north coming down to a definite geographical limit, and the cholera of the
south decaying from January and dead. in June. Had invasion occurred, a sudden rise over a
wide area in July and August would have been apparent, as a third and distinctive feature in the
table. And this we do not find.
Looking at the geographical distribution of the epidemic over the area of the Central
Provinces, out of the total of 1,592 deaths 1,291 occurred in the Nerbudda districts, and these
were associated with the cholera of the Berars, an area suddenly invaded in July 1872, and. which
gave 1,578 deaths. There can be little doubt that the cholera of Hyderabad, which com-
menced simultaneously with this cholera of the Berars, was truly associated with it ; and this
cholera and that of Kurnool in September, October and November, was perhaps all that was due
to one common influence affecting in 1872 these tracts of the Madras Presidency and the
Central Provinces, the Berars, and the districts reached by cholera in the Bombay Pre-
sidency.
All districts north and west of Hyderabad suffered from epidemic cholera in 1872.
The districts to the south, and south-west, excepting Kurnool did not suffer and had no
cholera after June 1872, and the inference is, that what they had in the spring of 1872 belonged
to the cholera of a previous epidemic.
The east coast districts as far south as Nellore gave, in 1872, a total of 10,174 deaths.
This cholera is geographically connected with the cholera of Bengal Proper, and not with that
of Central India. It -followed the course which a cholera invading northwards into the Gan-
getic tract pursues; it commenced in spring, it culminated. in July and August, and died out
in October and November. Grouping this as a distinct body of cholera, which. I should be