15
THE CHOLERA INVASION OF 1859.
Dr. Bryden's re-
searches fail to give
any account of the in-
vading cholera reach-
ing Southern India
in 1859.
10. Dr. Bryden, in tracing out the earlier history of the epidemics spread-
ing from the endemic centre in Bengal, remarks (paragraph
118 of his report)*—" For four years after 1852 Northern
India remained free from cholera, until the invasion of the
epidemic of 1856. This, probably the greatest of all our
Indian epidemics, owed its greatness perhaps to its geographical repres-
sion ; although a true invading epidemic in the south, this limb was weak in
comparison to that invading to the north, and it was not until 1858 that it
reached Aden." Now this cholera of 1856 travelled down its
appointed course through the Central Provinces, the Bombay
Notice of the 1856
invasion.
Presidency, and the Deccan, invading Madras territory in the usual manner, and
overlapping a large extent of territory during the year 1857. If we may judge of
its ravages in the Mysore country and amongst troops marching in Southern
India in the early part of 1857, it had lost none of its strength on reaching this
Presidency. However it is not of the cholera of 1856 that I wish to say
anything, but of the invasion of Bombay and Madras in 1859. Unfortunately Dr.
Bryden's researches do not help us to understand anything about this particular
cholera. The indices he trusted to, the Civil Medical Returns of the Central
Provinces, did not afford him any information as to the pathway by which the
invading cholera of 1859 left the endemic area and attacked the whole of the
Bombay Presidency and Western Coast of India, from Kurrachee to Cape
Comorin. Dr. Bryden's maps for 1858 and 1859 afford no indication that cholera
moved out of the endemic area in the latter year across the Central Provinces
towards Bombay and the Deccan, but it is nevertheless the fact that the Bombay
and Madras territories were in that year invaded by a great cholera, while, if we
are to trust to Dr. Bryden's figures and maps, the invading cholera of that year
stopped short in what he calls the " eastern division of the epidemic area," viz.,
the districts eastward of Gwalior, Saugor, and Jubbulpore. It is somewhat
strange that a cholera map should have been drawn for 1859 so as to show a
complete exemption of the western and southern tracts, the more especially as
it is evident from the report that Dr. Bryden was acquainted with the fact of the
invasion of Bombay in that year. The map in question is wholly misleading.
It may be thought perhaps that the severe cholera of Western India in 1859,
was a portion of the cholera wave of 1856 that had reached the Red Sea
and caused frightful mortality in the autumn of 1858 ; but, if so, then the cholera of
that invasion took a wholly unprecedented course in striking, first the Arabian
and African coasts, and then returning again to the Western Coast of India with
redoubled virulence. I incline to the opinion that the new cholera invasion of
1859 did pass over the Central Provinces, and that Dr. Bryden's indices of that
year have led him into error in describing that tract of country as free of cholera
in 1859. The Madras Army Returns for 1859 show cases of cholera at Kamptee,
both in June and July, and it is quite clear that this station was under the
influence of epidemic invasion, and it would seem probable that Dr. Bryden's data
being too limited for the purpose, failed to inform him of the south-western
* A report on the Cholera of 1856-68, and its relations to the Cholera of previous epidemics, by James L.
Bryden, M..D., Surgeon, Bengal Army, Statistical Officer attached to the Sanitary Commissioner with the Govern-
ment of India, Calcutta, 1869.
E