170
REPORT ON THE CALCUTTA MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS.
Abolition of Bow-
Bazaar hospital.
number of women in hospital. This is erroneous. The number had little or no
influence. The strong reasons for the practice were given in my report to the
Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals, dated 14th March 1871, paragraphs
12—15.
6. In the paragraph on the cost of the lock hospitals in 1872, I find no
mention of the fact that two hospitals only were maintained in that year instead
of the three in former years. The Bow-Bazaar establishment was broken
up, the patients being removed to Alipore and Sealdah, and an examination
ward on the same scale as that at Chitpore was alone retained.
Venereal disease in
the garrison of
Fort William.
7. The report on the health of the European garrison must, I submit, be
altogether recast. The figures it contains bears no resemblance to those on record
either in the lock hospitals or the regimental books, but the facts of the year
carry a significance, the opposite of that which has been put forward. In my
report for 1871, I mentioned that increase of disease over the very low figures
of the previous year was perceptible in the newly-arrived regiment. I was not
in a position then to conclude that this increase was due to the same conditions,
which have caused increase in the same circumstances throughout England, in
camps, garrisons, and naval stations, when ships and bodies of men arrive from
less protected places. I noticed the fact only with relation to the practice of
pointing, out diseased women, which the newcomers could not at once adopt.
The events are now clearly marked, and in close correspondence with English
experience.
Circumstances un-
der which the
1-14th arrived in
Calcutta.
Gradual decrease
of venereal dis-
ease.
At the close of the year 1871, the men of Her Majesty's 19th Regiment leave
Calcutta after two years' residence almost free from syphilis; that is, local infection
has been reduced to a very low figure. The head-quarter's wing of the 1-14th Regi-
ment takes their place, having come from Cawnpore, where they had suffered largely
from the disease. The men are not inspected on arrival, and are at liberty to com-
municate such disease as they bring. It is returned to them by the women, and,
in addition to the cases contracted elsewhere, there is a great rise in the propor-
tion of Calcutta cases. The left wing joins them in March, and intermediately
drafts from England, and parties of men from various quarters have arrived, while
a detachment at Dum-Dum has been relievd fortnightly from Fort William. All
such parties joining the head-quarters are inspected on arrival, and do not there-
fore add to the disease of the town, but they soon begin to share in equal propor-
tion the result of the infection brought by the head-quarters. Up to the end
of April the increased quantity of disease is perceived; the men are only, in a
few instances, able to identify the women, and the assistance of this practice
is lost. The neighbourhoods visited by the soldiers are circumscribed, and the
women comparatively few in number; so that the general improvement of the
town is not impeded, and the soldiers who in the previous year had benefited
even more than the town, now of their own act fall back; while the rest of the
town continues to advance. By the end of April, the mischief seems to be
arrested; for, from the 1st May to 31st December, there are 13 cases of Calcutta
syphilis only on record against 29 in the first four months,—a number which
compares favorably even with the low figures of 1871. But here and now, as
before and elsewhere, gonorrhœa is not seen to be affected in equal degree; its
prevalence abates only in some degree about the month of September. Thus,
while the history of the 14th Regiment in Calcutta repeats pointedly the
histories of regiments coming to the best protected places in England, and
satisfactorily illustrates as they do the best effects of such protection, nothing
but fallacy can arise from representing the entire disease of the year among
them, as less than that of their predecessors here in 1871. The local cases were
not as stated by the Officiating Superintendent, 27 of syphilis and 30 of
gonorrhœa, but 48 of syphilis and 69 of gonorrhœa. I have been at some pains