RESOLUTION.
POLITICAL DEPARTMENT,
MEDICAL.
Calcutta, the 31st August 1874.
READ—
The report on the Calcutta Medical Institutions for the year 1873.
THE Lieutenant-Governor has again this year to thank the Surgeon-
General for a clear and comprehensive report on the medical institutions of
Calcutta. The inclusion of the report and returns, which in compliance with
His Honor's request the Governors of the Mayo Hospital have been good
enough to furnish, enhances the value of the present compilation, and renders
it a complete medical history of the town and suburbs for the year.
2. The Surgeon-General in setting forth his figures and in drawing
inferences has been careful to compare notes with the results obtained from
the municipal statistics of health. These do not always bear the same testi-
mony as the hospital returns and are more favorable as regards the public
health generally, shewing fewer cases of cholera. The statistics of the in-door
patients treated in the various hospitals establish that, including all diseases, the
ate of death was 143 per thousand, and excluding cholera cases 132 per thousand,
and that either way it was higher than during the three previous years.
Taking the whole population into account, the municipal returns show a death-
rate of 23.4 per thousand compared with 26.4 in the previous year. That there
was really an improvement in public health during the past year would seem
to be proved by the diminished number, both of persons admitted to hospital
and of persons treated as out-patients,—the difference being 1,909 of the former
and 8,473 of the latter. This result is conspicuous, chiefly in the returns of
the Mayo Hospital, and is accounted for by the absence in the past year of
dengue—a disease which in the previous year sent over two thousand persons
into hospital.
3. The conclusion which the statistics of last year tended to establish
to the effect that the cold weather months are the most adverse to public
health is fully borne out by the present report, and is confirmed by a reference
to the municipal returns. The largest number of deaths continue to be
attributable to diarrhœa, dysentery, and similar bowel complaints. Dropsy
was very fatal last year. The cases of consumption and bronchitis were
numerous. In proportion to the number of persons attacked, tetanus was the
most deadly disease, and remittent fever the next ;492 cases of cholera were
admitted into the hospitals, nearly double the numer in 1871. The ratio of
deaths was 536, or higher than any previous year up to 1868. The number of
cases of debility, and the number of deaths arising from it, were large, especially
in the Campbell Hospital. In comparing the figures of the present with those
of the past year, the Lieutenant-Governor does not fail to bear in mind that
the orders passed last year regarding moribund patients has very greatly in-
creased the number of admissions to hospital as well as the death-rate in the
present returns.
4. The acknowledgments of Government are due to the officers in charge
of the various hospitals for the increased care with which they have endea-
voured to trace cases to the locality where the evil originated. Much light
may thus eventually be thrown upon the medical topography of Calcutta, and
the best results are to be anticipated from the quickened intelligence with which
it will be possible for the sanitary authorities to direct their efforts, as year by
year the plague spots of the town are more clearly defined. The Lieutenant-
Governor will watch with interest the effects, which it will rest with the
medical authorities to trace, of the efforts which are now making to improve
Chitpore and Burra Bazar, and other parts of the town, which the figures given
in paragraph 7 of the present report would prove to be the peculiar haunts of
cholera. Reflection on the blessings which would result if these dark places
were to be transformed into healthy abodes should stimulate the efforts of all