Chapter III.] RE-OCCUPATION OF THE EPIDEMIC AREA IN THE SPRING OF 1875.
CHAPTER III.
THE GENERAL PHENOMENA ATTENDING THE OCCUPATION OF THE CHOLERA AREA OF THE
SPRING OF 1875.
The field to be occupied was a vacant one, and all experience has taught us that in any
area of India unoccupied for two years in succession, invasion
from without, and invasion only, will cause the re-appearance
of cholera. It is from within the endemic area in Eastern
Bengal that this cholera of invasion comes,—marching, say
some; by aerial progress, say others. Passengers setting out from Lower Bengal are presumed
to have carried cholera to Ceylon; passengers setting out from Lower Bengal or the Gangetic
districts are presumed to have carried cholera to Debra Dun and the Mussoorie Hills, and
to nearly every district of Northern and Western India intervening between the Himalayas
and the Deccan; and their presence, it is suggested, was the cause of a simultaneous outburst
within ten days along a line extending for many thousand miles—a line not overstepped
in Northern and Western India, and bounding vast tracts traversed by roads and railways,
intervening between the limits reached and the endemic area, within which as yet cholera
failed to show itself.
If the hypothesis that cholera marches be true, it is very singular that the body of
the epidemic of 1875 got nearly to the end of its journey before visibly commencing its
progress over the epidemic area of Hindostan.
The aspect of the cholera of the spring of 1875 forbids the acceptance of this hypo
-thesis by any one who has studied cholera as a naturalist.
As little reason is there to entertain the suggestion, that the general re-appearance was but
the renewal in situ of the cholera of the preceding epidemic, repressed throughout 1873 and 1874
by occult meteorological influences. There was nothing abnormal in the meteorology of these
years; and with the presence of the materies of an epidemic, the general behaviour of
cholera over India would have been consistent with previous parallels. I do not believe
that the suggestion is tenable for any district of the many that I have cited. Take the
single example of Dehra Dun as typical. The epidemic of 1872 died out in October of
that year, and not one cholera death was recorded up to April 1875, with a single exception,
which occurred in October 1874. This cholera of 1874-75 was not grown in Dehra Dun;
it was the cholera of a new introduction.
Finally, it is suggested that the phenomenon is one of the meaning of which we know
nothing, and can know nothing.
But every occurrence connected with cholera has many parallels—some absolute, some
modified. Every modification has its meaning, explaining and illustrating why in each instance
the divergence takes place. It is on previous parallels and their modifications that such a
case as that now before us must be studied.
2 8 3
The cholera of the spring of 1875
was neither introduced by human
intercourse, nor locally grown from
pre-existing germs.
Parallels in relation to which the
cholera of the spring of 1875 may
he studied. Parallel of the spring
of 1818.
We naturally go back to the events of April and May 1818
in Western and Central India, an area supposed for the first
time on record to have been covered with cholera in these
months.
The facts as recorded by Jameson will be found sketched in my original Report
(pages 95 to 97). I found it necessary, writing in 1869, to append a footnote to this sketch,
warning the reader that where Jameson speaks of this spring cholera of 1818 as "marching,"
the statement must be regarded as theoretical only—a caution justified by the events of 1875
and of many intervening epidemics.
I cannot now go over this ground again. Any one who turns up the passage will be
struck with the parallel. The great spring cholera of Oudh and Goruckpore, and of Allaha
-bad and Cawnpore, culminating in April—the repulsion from he western half of the Nort
h-Western Provinces, the "marked aversion" of the cholera for Bareilly and the other tracts
east of the Ganges—the April cholera of Bundelkhund, and the cholera of Jubbulpore of 9th.
April—cholera in Western Malwa culminating all over between 4th and 12th May—the cholera
of Hoshungabad appearing on the same week in 1818 and in 1875, the town being in the one
year the centre of a wilderness and in the other a station in the Great Peninsula Railway
— c h o l e r a o c c u p y i n g t h e B e r a r s b e f o r e t h e e n d o f M a y ; a l l t h e s e t e l l u s t h a t w h a t h a p p e n e d
in 1875 happened in 1818, and by no contingency necessitating the intervention of human inter
-
c o u r s e a s e x p l a n a t o r y o f t h e f a c t s .
To attempt to bridge over the difficulty of accounting for the presence of cholera in the
west while it had not as yet appeared in many intervening
tracts of country, I cannot do better than reproduce a sketch,
which I find among my notes, written under the impulse
imparted by the recurrence of parallel circumstances, at the
very date to which the preceding paragraphs refer. It is dated 11th May 1872. The
general epidemic of Bengal of that year was imminent, and it was my desire to find out
whether anything definite could be gathered, towards elucidating the conditions under which
the epidemic then manifest had entered the Bombay Presidency.
The parallel of the invasion of
Western India in 1872. My appre
-ciation of this invasion in the spring
of 1872.