3
among grain-sellers throughout Bombay. It is well known that this spreading
of the disease far and wide among grain-dealers did not occur, and the 64 grain
and flour sellers, millers and grain-parchers who died from plague between the
mouths of September 1896 and January 1897, died principally in infected
localities in the neighbourhood of the Docks where the disease first appeared, but
did not themselves form centres from which the disease spread in unaffected
districts.
The epidemic was observed to increase notably during the cold season and
to decline during the hob weather (vide Table VIL). This increase during the
cold months was probably due, to a groat extent, to the sick and healthy occu-
pying the same rooms during the day and sleeping together at night, and also to
the depressing effects of cold. During the warm months the poor live under
much inoro sanitary conditions than in the cold season.
The influence of animals in spreading the disease was, with the exception of
rats, probably inappreciable. A searching inquiry at Damaun, where there
were great numbers of pigs at large in the streets, elicited no evidence of a single
death, or even of an appearance of sickness among pigs, although an exceptionally
severe epidemic of plague had visited the town. Sheep, goats, horses and cows
were unaffected. There was evidence (post-mortem) of a dog having been
affected, but none that cats contracted the disease. Birds were not at all affected.
In the epidemic at present going on at Hardwar, monkeys are infected and
dying in considerable numbers. The grey monkey is very susceptible to plague
and rarely recovers, the brown monkey is much less severely affected.
The influence of ants and bugs in spreading the disease is considered by
Mr. Hankin (vide his report) to be unimportant,
An alluvial soil, situated at a low level, copiously watered, associated with
a high degree of atmospheric moisture and a temperature of 80° F. (conditions
which are fulfilled by seaports like Bombay), are generally looked upon as those
most favourable for the development of plague to epidemic proportions. But as
far as can bo judged, the Bombay outbreak, where these conditions obtained, was
certainly no more severe than that which has since occurred at Kirkee. In the
latter place the soil is of laterite and well drained, and the cantonment has a high
situation, a small rainfall and a dry atmosphere.
All observers up to the present time have connected the occurrence and
diffusion of the disease with want and filth, and there seems to be no doubt that
these factors do favour it, in so far as they lower the general health and diminish
natural immunity. But it will bo seen that filth per se has but little influence,
from the fact that there occurred in the House of Correction, Byculla, where
cleanliness is brought as nearly to perfection as is attainable, an outbreak which
exceeded in severity that in any of the filthy chawls and tenements around.
There were 345 prisoners confined in this jail when plague broke out there on
the 23rd January 1897, the outbreak lasted for 15 days, and in that time 88
prisoners were attacked, 17 of whom died. It is a significant fact, too, in this
connection that out of 1.570 patients treated at the Arthur Road, and Parel
Hospitals there were only 10 sweepers, and that the halacores who remove the
night-soil from the houses, and who form probably the dirtiest portion of the
population, were notably free from plague. It is true they are a strong well-
nourished class, of whom only the fittest have survived, and they are highly paid
and live well.
The predisposing causes were mainly those leading to a lower state of
vitality, and which consequently lessened the natural resistance of the individual
to infection. In this way, as above mentioned, the long-continued and excep-
tionally hot season of 1896, the unusually heavy rainfall which followed and which
confined the poor constantly in their overcrowded and insanitary dwellings, and
the great heat which succeeded the rains, were powerful factors in lowering
vitality. Then came scarcity due to dearness of food. During the cold season
the unhealthy condition of chawls (native flats) and houses in the city was
rendered worse by overcrowding, the inmates being unable to sleep and work in
the opon, as large numbers of them are accustomed to do during the warmer
months. Indeed, the effect of cold alone on the feeble and on those who are
insufficiently clothed, as already mentioned, is a powerful factor in lessening
resistance to infection.