24
was read before the Bombay Medical and Physical Society by Dr. S. A. Powell,
the Police Surgeon; and this paper gives some idea of the actual incidence of
malaria among a portion of the population during the period 1901 —1903.
Dr. Powell as the result of the microscopic examinations of the blood of 3,413
cases of fever, chiefly met with among the Police of the City, diagnosed the
presence of malaria parasites in 2,542,
55. It is difficult to find any record of much value regarding malaria in
Bombay from the date of publication of Dr. Powell's paper until the end of
1908. In a recent report published by the Health Department references are
made to the occurrence of the disease at Chowpati, and in the neighbourhood
of the Malabar Hill Reservoir in 1905. It is also recorded that in 1906
a request to be allowed to examine the blood of children in 10 schools at
Mazagaon, in order to ascertain the prevalence of malaria, was refused by those
in charge, except in two cases.
56. In September 1905 the Municipal Corporation passed the following
resolution :—
" That in view of the steadily increasing prevalence of malarial and
" various other fevers in the City, and the very high rate of mortality
" resulting therefrom for several years past, it is very necessary in the
" opinion of this Corporation, that a comprehensive and searching enquiry
" should be instituted with regard to their causation and spread and
" the measures necessary for their prevention and removal so far as
" is practicable."
As a result of this resolution a Committee was appointed to enquire into
certain matters connected with the prevalence and causation of malarial and
other fevers in Bombay City ; but no actual investigation of the disease was
undertaken and the Committee after sitting for about two years published a
report in 1908, in which little mention is made of malaria.
57. But towards the end of 1907 complaints began to be made about
malaria in the neighbourhood of the Frere Road and the Corporation passed a
resolution in December 1907 asking the Municipal Commissioner to report as
to the cause of an epidemic of virulent type which had broken out there.
In December 1907 Dr. Cogill called attention to the fact that among 200
of the Governor's Body Guard, resident in the lines at Chowpati, there had been
40 cases of malaria, and stated that the disease was steadily increasing. The
Body Guard lines are situated at the base of Malabar Hill and leakage from
the reservoir above them formed small pools and streamlets in which anopheles
mosquitoes were readily found.
58. In May 1908 certain residents in the Frere Road addressed a letter to
the Municipal Commissioner making further complaints regarding malaria in
that locality. In this letter they stated that some of them had lived in that neigh-
bourhood for ten years without suffering from malaria until the construction
of the New Docks was undertaken there. The contract for the New Docks
was signed in April 1904, work began the same year and the foundation stone
was laid in 1905, but the earliest complaints about malaria in the vicinity
appear to have been submitted late in 1907, three clear years after the
work had commenced.
59. During 1908 numerous complaints of malaria were made from many
parts of the City, but there is no definite information regarding the incidence of
the disease in any locality with the exception of that given in a valuable paper
by Major Liston, I. M. S., published in the Journal of the Bombay Natural
History Society, November 1908. In this paper Major Liston records the fact
that an investigation in the neighbourhood of the Frere Road adjoining the
New Docks had shown that 80 per cent. of the children resident there had
enlarged spleens and 50 per cent. of those examined by him harboured malarial
parasites in their blood. Two species of anopheles mosquitoes were caught by
him in the locality, Nysso-Myzomyia rossi and Neocellia stephensi and the
dissection of a number of the latter led to the important discovery that 25
60. In November 1908 the Government of Bombay influenced by the
serious nature of the epidemic of malaria in the City, decided to take action and
to arrange for a systematic investigation of the causes which had led to the
outbreak with a view to the adoption of preventive measures in the future.