46
Cholera in abeyance
in Madura during the
Chittra festival in May.
Magistrate of the district ; and, as the large Chittra festival at Madura was
approaching, it was suggested that special sanitary care should be taken to preserve
the public health. In my letter to the Collector, dated 2nd April, I remarked, " I
do not apprehend any general outbreak of cholera during the approaching festival
(in May), as this is not the season in which the disease is apt to prevail epidemi-
cally in your district." This prediction turned out to be quite correct. Captain
Gruthrie notes that during the Chittra feast, when the town
was enormously crowded, cholera was not prevalent ; indeed,
for four days there was not a single case. The Chittra feast
occurs in May during the hottest and driest period of the year, and before the
arrival of the south-west monsoon, the moisture of which is thought to be essen-
tial to the general spread of cholera. (I shall note, however, in regard to the
Tinnevelly District, that the absence of monsoon moisture was no obstacle to the
spread of cholera in the dry season of that district.)
Cholera in the Cum-
bum valley.
67. All through May and June cholera continued to appear in a few places,
and in July it became located in the Cumbum valley, and was
very prevalent and fatal in the town of Cumbum, from the
24th of June. Captain Gruthrie, the Superintendent of Police of the district, who
has taken great pains to investigate the progress of cholera, and who has oblig-
ingly furnished me with the following memorandum, detailing his own views as
to increase of cholera in the district after July, was of opinion that the intensity
of the disease had been aggravated by the landing of return emigrants from
Ceylon with cholera, at Davipatam ; but on reviewing the whole facts of the case,
I am not inclined to think that this is a sufficient explanation of the intensity of
the cholera in the districts lying at the base of the Pulney mountains.
MEMORANDUM.
Captain
Guthrie's
Memorandum.
" Cholera made its first appearance in the Madura District in the south-eastern or Zemindary
portion in January, and the first death was recorded at Shevagunga of a
man who had come up from the coast near Ramnad (village not known) ; not
many days after a case occurred in Madura town. The man attacked was a
handyman belonging to Salem District, who, along with the others, was en route from Shevagunga to
Salem. He died. About twelve days after this it became well developed at Tondy on the coast, the
first case being that of a man who had come from Davipatam, nine miles from Ramnad, the shipping
station for Ceylon coolies during the south-west monsoon. Later by a week (in February) the deaths
in Madura town became frequent and daily, and by the end of the month Tondy had reported eight
and Madura town sixteen deaths.
" One death happened in Pulney on the 15th February, the victim being a stranger from Coim-
batore or Salem ; and from that time one death only occurred up to the annual festival there, when
seven deaths were registered between 14th and 18th March, and the legacy continued to leave its
mark up to the end of the month, when it ceased. Deaths registered twenty.
" Almost simultaneously with the appearance of cholera at Pulney, several cases were
reported at Chuthraputty (ten miles east of Pulney) on the road from Madura to Pulney ; and I
have no doubt it found its way there from Madura and by means of cartmen proceeding to Coimba-
tore District through Pulney, which is the regular route ; the first persons when seized were so
travelling.
" Till the end of March it was confined to Madura town, Tondy, and Pulney ; but it then appeared
almost in the same day at Tiruparagoondum, four miles south of Madura on the Tinnevelly road,
at Dindigul, at Oosslumputty, twenty-four miles west of Madura on the short road to the Cumbum
valley (Pereacolum Talook) and at Nellacottah and Battlagundu on the main road to Pereacolum-
A case also occurred at Mailore, eighteen miles north-east of Madura, on the road to Trichinopoly,