( 3 )
The death-rate from cholera was virtually the same as in the previous year, the
numbers, both of cases and of deaths, rising in equal proportions. The general
death-rate, excluding cholera, was the lowest of all the years in the series. The
proportion of deaths per mille of total population was 28.4 against 30.4 in the
previous year.
The following table exhibits the true death-rate among natives, excluding
the mortality from cholera and moribund cases :—
Campbell
Hospital.
Medical
Colleg
e H o s p i t a l .
Howrah
General
Hospital.
Mayo
Hospital.
Police
Hospital. Total.
True native deaths, excluding cholera ... ...
...
1,159
346
224
216
19
1,964
Moribund persons ... . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
192
91
33
43
1
360
Difference ...
967
255 191
173
18
1,604
True death-rate per mille, excluding cholera and moribund cases
191.03
111.7
252.6
92.27
7.6
130.06
6. With regard to the features of particular diseases, the Surgeon-General
makes the following remarks : —
" The quantity of fever in 1883 varied little from that of the previous year, but it was
less fatal in the proportion of 77 to 90 per thousand. There was some increase of cholera
with an ordinary degree of fatality.
" In the small-pox hospital 103 persons were treated in 1883. Of these, 22 had been
vaccinated, of whom 3 died ; 18 had been inoculated and 5 died ; 4 had had small-pox
previously and 1 died ; 59 were unprotected and 26 died. Assuming the death-rate
elsewhere to have been the same as in the hospitals, the number recorded in the first table
will represent about 214 cases of disease, showing that nearly one-half were received into
hospital. This proportion is an improvement on previous numbers, and is explained by the
activity of the police mentioned by the Health Officer in his reports. But the return of
small-pox in 1883 is less satisfactory in the quantity it shows. Heretofore the town has
enjoyed three or four years of comparative exemption between severe outbreaks, not between
culminating points, but between the cessation of high numbers after one epidemic and the
return of them on the approach of another. One doubtful exception occurred in 1876-77.
There was before 1883 but one year of exemption, viz. 1882, and as the figures of 1883 have
already been exceeded by those of 1884, there is reason to fear that the power conferred by
the law which made vaccination compulsory in 1880 has not been employed to advantage.
The records of the Health Office do not show any improvement in the quantity of work,
and the protective value of it is open to serious suspicion on the data supplied by the
Campbell Hospital."
The facts reported by the Surgeon-General are unsatisfactory, and point
to defects in the working of the Vaccination Act. The question has been con-
sidered separately in connection with a representation made to Government
since the close of the year, by some influential residents of Calcutta, complain-
ing of the inconvenience and risk to which the public are exposed for
want of proper accommodation in any of the hospitals at Calcutta for
European patients suffering from small-pox. Articles on the subject also
appeared in some of the leading newspapers. As it appeared on enquiry that
there were some grounds for complaint, the Surgeon-General was requested to
take early steps to convert the Shumbunath barrack, in the compound of the
General Hospital, into a ward for paying patients suffering from small-pox,
and to make such improvements and alterations in the small-pox ward of the
Sealdah Hospital as to make it suitable for the reception of patients of the
poorer classes. This has been done, and the arrangements should suffice for
a n y o r d i n a r y o u t b r e a k o f s m a l l - p o x . T h e S u r g e o n - G e n e r a l , h o w e v e r , w a s a l s o
requested to submit a report on the advisability of establishing a hospital at
Calcutta, on the basis of the Eden Sanitarium at Darjeeling, for the reception
of patients suffering from infectious diseases, including cholera and fever.
Dr. Payne has expressed the opinion that the ordinary prevalence of these
diseases is not such as to justify the construction of a separate special hospital,
which would be very costly, and which could not be even approximately self
¬ s u p p o r t i n g . T h e L i e u t e n a n t - G o v e r n o r h a s a c c o r d i n g l y d e c i d e d t o t a k e n o
further action in this direction for the present.
6. The results of the surgical operations in the Medical College Hospital
were not so satisfactory as those obtained in 1882. The number of operations
made in the two wards of the hospital was 348, of which 60 cases proved fatal,