10
Bombay Veterinary Asso-
ciation.
17. I cannot but mention the valuable aid to the students the Bombay
Veterinary Association has been. They have been able
to attend its meetings, which are held in the college,
to gain knowledge, and to listen to discussions.
When I first attended a meeting of this Association as a visitor, I was struck by
the quiet and unostentatious manner in which it was diffusing useful and prac-
tical Veterinary knowledge, and I look upon it as an excellent field for students
to glean information from, to give expression to their ideas, and to clear up
any mental difficulties they may possess of a subject. It is an Association
deserving of every encouragement.
Sanitation of College and
Hospital.
18. The insanitary condition of the College and Hospital premises received
my immediate attention on joining as Principal. The
rains were then on and the place presented a most
deplorable appearance, being overgrown with the cul-
tivation of maize and vegetables and rank herbage of every description. This
cultivation was carried on with heavy manuring composed of cotton and wool-
waste and the sweepings and other debris from the neighbouring mills with an
occasional admixture of fish refuse. What struck me, too, was the abominable
practice in vogue, by the Hospital authorities of spreading the fæces and urine
of some hundreds of animals every day over the soil of the compound under the
plausible pretext of manuring and watering the fruit and toddy trees. A com-
bination well calculated to make the air of the compound impure and unwhole-
some, more especially was this noticeable after a shower of rain followed by
sunshine. The atmosphere of the college was absolutely at times putrid, so
much so that work had to be stopped and I, strong as my constitution was when
I joined on the 12th August, was laid up with fever and sore-throat within a
month. Thus from my personal experience and from what I learnt from Dr.
Nariman and from a careful perusal of reports and the correspondence which had
taken place on the subject, I looked upon the matter as an extremely serious
one, and recommended that a thoroughly representative committee be formed to
make a full enquiry into the existing evils and to suggest remedies for their
removal, or at least, as far as local circumstances would permit, to lessen the
dangers to health which they were bringing about. A committee of enquiry was
sanctioned by Government in their Resolution, Educational Department, No. 2328,
dated 18th November 1891, to report on the insanitary condition of the surround-
ings and premises of the Bombay Veterinary College, and was composed as
follows:—
President.
T. D. Little, Esq., M.Inst.C.E., Chief Engineer, Northern Division,
Bombay.
Members.
Surgeon-Major MacRury, Sanitary Commissioner ;
Surgeon-Major T. S. Weir, Health Officer, Bombay Municipality ;
Veterinary-Lieut.-Colonel Clayton, Inspecting Veterinary Surgeon, Bombay
Army;
Framji Dinshaw Petit, Esquire ;
Khán Bahádur M. C. Murzban ;
K. M. Shroff, Esquire.
Secretary.
Veterinary-Captain James Mills, A. V. D., Principal, Bombay Veterinary
College.
Dr. S. K. Nariman, Assistant Professor, Bombay Veterinary College, was
invited by the President to attend the Committee. As their other duties would
permit, individual members of the Committee visited on several occasions the
College and Hospital as well as the outside surroundings, and more particularly
the village of Parel, so as to make themselves familiar with the exact state of
affairs. The Committee, after having collected all the available information from
the College and Hospital records and had an analysis made of the water of the