31
but over very large tracts of country the disease was absolutely unknown for a
considerable portion of the year. How feeble the cholera influence had become,
and how it had worn itself out, in this the sixth year of its existence, may be
illustrated by the following quotation from the report of the Inspector-General
of the Indian Medical Department on Civil Dispensaries for 1868.
" In the Salem District an outbreak of cholera was reported in January,
which at first seemed to assume such alarming proportions, that extra medical aid
was sent from Madras, at the Collector's request. The disease, however, proved
so remarkably amenable to treatment, and the mortality so unprecedentedly
small (under nine per cent.), that the inference is that the epidemic must have
been chiefly, if not entirely, one of bilious cholera or choleraic diarrhoea."
Cholera in Madras
during 1868.
46. In the European and Native Armies, and in the Jails of Southern India,
cholera was almost unknown in 1868. There were five fatal
cases amongst European Troops, but four of these occurred
at Kamptee, the Military Station of Nagpore, which station came under the
influence of the new invasion, and one at Thayetmyoo, in British Burmah.
Amongst the Native Troops there occurred forty cases, and eighteen deaths.
In the thirty-nine Jails of the Madras Presidency there were only eight cases,
and four deaths. The entire civil population of 26,000,000, which in 1866
(the third year of a cholera invasion) lost in round numbers 200,000 persons
from cholera, had only 8,023 casualties from this cause in
1868, and this mortality was chiefly confined to the districts
of Salem, Tanjore, and Trichinopoly, in which we have seen
that the epidemic wave of former years had nearly exhausted its strength. And
as regards the season of prevalence, it may be said that nearly all these 8,023
deaths occurred in the early months of 1868, and that cholera, as an epidemic,
was dead throughout the Presidency in April 1868.
Cholera confined
mainly to Salem, Tan-
jore, and Trichinopoly
in 1868.
47. Dr. Bryden has recently, with great labour and patience, shown how the
cholera epidemics of recent years have occupied certain areas in the North-West,
and Central Provinces of India. It has been reserved for me to illustrate in
what manner, and at what distance of time, these explosive waves of cholera
from the Bengal endemic field, make themselves felt in the southern districts of
the Indian Peninsula.
The movement of
cholera in a south-
easternly direction over
Burmah and China yet
to be investigated.
To Dr. Bryden we are indebted for a careful study of the movement of
cholera, as observed in Northern and Central India. There yet
remain to be registered the facts, as to the movements of cholera
in an eastern or south-eastern direction, over Burmah, China,
Cochin China, and South-eastern Asia generally. When this
has been done, and with the present data for the history of recent epidemics of
Southern India placed on record, there will be sufficient facts accumulated for
determining the share aerial influences may have played in the diffusion of
cholera in the eastern hemisphere. In the Appendix to this report will be found
tables of the prevalence of cholera in the Madras Army stationed in Burmah,
from the year 1859 down to 1865. The Sanitary Commissioner of British Burmah
will be able to supply the further data for the Civil population, from that period.
Dr. Bryden has already indicated a new outburst of cholera from the
great endemic centre in 1868. The map drawn by him, to illustrate the
annual report for 1868 of the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government
of India, does not, however, represent the whole truth, though it is quite
I