57
Chemical disinfection when adopted was carried out according to the instructions
contained in the Memorandum on Disinfection. A disinfecting gang was obtained from the
Central Disinfection Depot, Jullundur City, and placed in charge of a Hospital Assistant.
Dholewál, the first village to be infected, was chemically disinfected under the supervision
of the Civil Surgeon, and the infected houses in two neighbouring villages were also disin-
fected, but in consequence of the opposition of the people to the measure chemical disinfec-
tion was abandoned in villages. Chemical disinfection was, however, carried out to a
certain extent in all Municipal towns except Máchiwára. For reasons already referred to,
however, it was not very efficacious.
The number of houses and rooms disinfected in towns and cost of chemicals and
appliances used is shewn below :—
Name of town.
Ludhiána
Jagraon
Ráekot
Khanna
• ..
...
...
• ••
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
•••
• ••
...
...
•••
Total
...
...
...
Number of
houses disin-
fected.
748
90
198
192
1,228
Number of
rooms disin-
fected.
4,227
523
1,029
967
6,747
Cost of chemicals
and appliances
Rs. A. P.
826 3 0
432 10 0
292 8 0
131 14 6
1,683 4 6
The cost of chemicals and appliances as shown in the above table comes to about 4
annas per room.
Popular methods.
The only methods of disinfection adopted by the people themselves were the burning
of big fires in infected rooms and white-
washing their houses before re-occupying
them. These measures were only adopted in a comparatively few instances.
Inoculation.
(j) Thirty-one thousand five hundred and twelve inoculations were performed in the
Ludhiána District during the year under report.
Of these 18,075 were performed in the Ludhiána
Tahsíl, 7,315 in the Jagraon and 6,122 in the Samrála Tahsíl. Inoculation operations were
not commenced until February 1902. A distinction is made between the inoculations
performed before and after April 16th. In the first period inoculations were limited to the
town of Ludhiána and of, it Dr. Fateh Chand notes:—
" The total number done in the period was 10,646, and these operations were performed
by the Civil Surgeon and the Assistant Surgeon of the Civil Hospital. Plague was at its
ascendency at the time and people were in great alarm. The townspeople took to it kindly
in the beginning. They were nearly all Hindus. Their eagerness for it was so much that
after the work of the afternoon used to be over the Civil Surgeon was invited to private
houses where women and children of the street gathered and got themselves inoculated.
This state went on for a few days. The number of volunteers from the town began to
decrease, but flocks of villagers poured in from all sides and from villages far and near and
demanded prompt inoculation. Their zeal was so great at the time that every one wanted
to be operated before the other, and they fought their way out to the table. Altogether
people of 177 villages in various numbers were inoculated in this period."
After April 16th four inoculation parties were formed " to itinerate through the whole
district and bringing inoculation to the doors of the people." In this period 17,568 inocula-
tions were performed. Until about the middle of May, i. e. as long as plague was epidemic,
there was considerable willingness to submit to inoculation, but afterwards the attitude of
the people altered and the inoculation parties then met with little success. The Deputy
Commissioner writes :—
" The great object aimed at during the present inoculation campaign has been to
have if possible several people at least inoculated now in every village in the district, to act
as living examples afterwards of the absence of risk in the operation. This has been practi-
cally accomplished now, and there is hardly a village, however distant, in which some
half dozen or so of men at least have not been inoculated.
" The timidity among the villagers is however still very great : in one group of villages
operations were entirely put a stop to, because a Patwári who came forward to be inoculated
in order to show to his village that there was no danger, was seized with a sudden faintness