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MEDICAL AND SANITARY REPORT OF THE NATIVE ARMY OF BENGAL,
Location and
movements.
Kohima,
Naga Hills.
Topography.
Meteorology
and climate.
short broken periods, during which Surgeon W. Conry officiated in medical
charge.
II. Location and movements. —The left wing was detached as an independent body and
quartered at Gauhati on 16th November 1877; previously the wings had not been separate.
The head-quarters of the wing remained at Gauhati during the year 1878. The following
detachments were supplied from the wing:—
Kohima, Naga Hills.—A detachment consisting of one European officer, with 56 men,
joined a detachment of the right wing of this regiment to form an expeditionary force to seize
and occupy the village of Kohima. The expedition started in October, proceeded by steamer
to Nigriting; thence marched through Samaguting (our political capital in these hills) to
Kohima, which they occupied without resistance. Kohima is one of the largest and most
central villages of the most warlike and raiding of these savage people. The troops have
stockaded themselves there, and hold it as a central base of operations to restrain the hillmen
from their perpetual wars, blood-feuds, raids, &c. It will thus be seen that the men composing
the wing were serving in numerous places, and under conditions extremely varying.
III. Topography.—The topography has been too frequently and well described for its
ordinary features to need recapitulation. The Public Works Department have been engaged
during the last year in the systematic drainage of the station and of the swamps to the south.
Certain of these swamps are being deepened into well-defined ornamental tanks. The earth
removed during this excavation is being used to fill up and efface other portions of the swamps.
The tanks are to be connected by cuttings (provided with sluice-gates) with one another and
with the river, so that advantage may be taken of the rise and fall of the river (more than
30 feet) to ensure outfall for the drainage of the tanks, and, if necessary, flush them for
purposes of cleansing. The scheme is at present merely in course of being carried out, and the
sanitary advantages are yet prospective.
IV. Meteorology and climate of district Kamroop and station Gauhati during 1878. —The
ordinary climate of Lower Assam generally, including this district, may be thus described:
—
Equable, moderately hot, extremely damp; the atmosphere usually nearly saturated with
aqueous vapour. Being shut in by this blanket of vapour, the extremes of temperature are
not marked. The mean daily range is small; the temperature in winter never falls very low, the
mean minimum of the coldest mouth being from 120 to 180 above freezing point. The temper
-
ature in the summer is never high, the mean maximum of the hottest month averaging from
85° to 91°; but the air at this temperature being ordinarily almost saturated with aqueous
vapour, renders even this moderate heat difficult to support and extremely enervating and
depressing both mentally and physically, inducing disinclination and incapacity for exertion,
and owing to the want of evaporation from the skin (the air being already close on saturation
point), any exertion causes profuse perspiration and prostration, and hence double liability to
chills. Vast extents of jungle and swamp, alternately flooded and drying in the sun's rays,
expose large surfaces of decomposing vegetable and animal matters, and readier the climate
essentially a malarious one. Among the people the malarial cachexia and habit of body is
frequently observed,—big-bellied, thin limbed, pale-blooded, and anæmic. The types of the pre
-
vailing diseases are malarial in forms of fever, anæmia and dropsy, visceral enlargement, &c.
As commonly prevails among inhabitants of marshy lands, opium-eating is of almost univer
-
sal prevalence. In the early stage of its consumption it probably lends a resisting power to
malarial affections, but eventually leaves its votary broken down and a prey to visceral and
intestinal disorders, liver disorders, dropsy, diarrhœa, and dysentery. The rich alluvial soil
produces, with scarce any exertion of the cultivator, rich crops of rice (the universal food of
its people), sugar-cane, mustard, tobacco, &c. Tea is indigenous and one of the staple pro
-
ducts; a species of coffee is indigenous, and the Lebanon coffee of commerce promises to
flourish and become another product of commercial importance. In fact, a naturally rich
soil and a moist, warm, equable climate combine to foster a luxuriance of vegetable growth
and capacity for forest production which, though at present largely running to waste in pro
-
ducing dense jungle, may yet make Assam the garden of India. It is highly probable that
clearing away forest and jungle may exert a great influence in altering the climate of Lower
Assam by lessening the rainfall, rendering the air more dry, the temperature less equable, and
its extremes more marked; and, thus, these districts might be rendered unsuited to growth of
tea, coffee, &c. At present, however, jungle seems rather to be encroaching on man than the
reverse, and measures are being generally taken to extend the cultivation of forest. In and
about the station of Gauhati, the low grounds, if not actually swampy during the rains, have
the subsoil water-level near the surface. This is especially true of cantonments; in the
cemetery (which is in fact a walled-in corner of the parade ground) during a burial in the
rains, the grave, 6 feet deep, contained in spite of baling from 1 foot to 1½ feet of water,
and the floating coffin had to be sunk by piling on heavy stones, the whole being repugnant
to the sentiments of the by-standers and calculated to add a new terror to death.
The crops promised a bumper yield; but excessive flooding soon destroyed these hopes by
swamping the crops on the lower grounds. No exceptional amount of rain fell in this district
in the first half of the rains. The flooding during these months seems to have been caused,
not by local rainfall, but by heavy rains higher up the river, and the large rushes of water
which came down in consequence.
There was some rise in price of food-grains, and perhaps some difficulty of living among
the poor was produced, yet prices never approached to famine level.