Memorandum on the precautions to be taken against Cholera.
It is not improbable that Cholera, which last year caused such great
mortality in certain districts of the Central Provinces, will again show itself in
different parts of the country, as the season in which it .more commonly prevail
approaches ; and, as it is to be feared that this year a scanty water-supply and
scarcity of food will arise,—evils which will render the mass of the population
more than usually liable to the effects of epidemic influences,—it is the more neces-
sary that increased efforts should be made for the removal of those circumstances
which are known to favour the spread of choleraic influence and to increase its
virulence.
2. The experience of the recent epidemic in these Provinces confirms the
opinions formed on observations of former epidemics, that the two principal
dangers against which especial vigilance ought to be used are :—First, the danger
of drinking-water which is in any (even the slightest) degree tainted by human
excrement, or other matters in a state of decomposition, as water from rivers and
streams, the banks of which are used as ordure "fields,—rrom tanks which are used
for washing the person or clothes, or from open wells liable to pollution by the.
use of foul vessels for drawing winter, or by the reflux of water from persons
washing on the brink ; and, secon'dly, the danger of breathing air which is made
foul with effluvia from the same sort of impurity. That the air and water-supply
of nearly all towns and villages in this country arc most liable to this kind of
pollution, is only too evident. In these Provinces great efforts have been made
to obviate this evil, and indeed it is to the application of conservancy rules, and
the general cleanliness insisted in all the larger towns, that the marked degree in
which they experienced comparative immunity from Cholera in the late epidemic,
is, in all probability, to be attiibuted.
3. The great object of all sanitary precautions is to prevent, if possible,
those unwholesome conditions which favour the spread of Cholera from arising ;
and the following suggestions are offered as to the best means' by which this
object may be attained.
4. In the first place, care must be taken that the soil within the "Abadee" or
in the immediate vicinity, is not defiled with excrement, and that refuse matter is
nowhere allowed to accumulate.
5. The free circulation of fresh air-through streets and houses tend greatly
to check the spread of epidemic disease and mitigate its violence ; and Cholera
is found to be most destructive where the houses are thickly crowded together
und the free-admission of fresh air is obstructed. Unfortunately, this is the case
an the greater proportion of towns and villages of this part of the country. This
is a great evil, bat it is aggravated ten-fold by the practice commonly followed
of stalling cattle within the villages. The number of cattle belonging to a
village frequently exceeds the population, and these are all confined at night, not
only within the village, but often within the houses—men, women, children and
cattle all sharing the same hut. By this practice the air is rendered very impure,
and people living in it are rendered more liable to the attacks of epidemic disease.
It ought not to-be difficult for the owners of cattle to enter into some common
arrangement for stalling and guarding them outside the "Abadee"
6. To guard against the danger of drinking impure water, extreme vigi-
lance is called for Where wells exist water from them should be used for drinking