68
15th April 1867. I quote his own words. Mr. Twynam says, " Year after year has sickness been
introduced by the immigrant coolies, and village after village has died out, or been so reduced that
only one or two families remain, and the country, for some distance on each side of the Mannar
Madawaratchy road, in the Mannar District, is fast becoming a desert."
50. I must confess that I regard with some degree of surprise that any question should nave
been raised by the authorities in India as to the importation of cholera into India from Ceylon,
when it is universally acknowledged in this province that the disease is brought from the coast of
India, the birth-place and head-quarters of cholera.*
51. The Cholera Commission appointed by His Excellency the Governor on the 3rd March
1867 to inquire into, and report upon, the causes which led to the outbreak of cholera in the Jaffna
Peninsula, after an extended inquiry express themselves in the following terms : " We have estab-
lished beyond doubt the facts of its having been introduced into the Peninsula from India, both
directly by sea and more circuitously by the central road, and of its having spread from village to
village by human intercourse, thus confirming the opinion, now generally entertained, respecting the
transmissibility and mode of propagation of cholera."
Interchange of sani-
tary reports between
Ceylon and Madras
Governments.
80. One result of the recent cholera invasion of Ceylon, has been to establish
an interchange of reports on public health between the Madras
and Ceylon Governments. I now furnish a bi-monthly state-
ment of cholera prevalence in the Southern Districts to the
Ceylon Government, and receive in return any information which that Govern-
ment possesses on the condition of cholera in Ceylon.
In this way I am now in a position to warn the Ceylon authorities of the
probable course of an epidemic, and to receive in return any information on
points of importance to the population of our Southern Districts.
Influence of new soil
and climatic condi-
tions in developing in-
fective properties of
cholera contagium.
81. There is one fact in regard to the extension of cholera to Ceylon that
I must briefly dwell upon, as illustrative of a peculiar feature
of the disease. It is this, that the peculiar contagium of the
disease, whatever it may be, appears to have become more
vigorous in its action after it had been taken to the foreign
soil of Ceylon, and had been brought back again by returning coolies to the port
of Davipatam.
We have seen that cholera became active on the Immigration roads in
Ceylon early in June, and about the end of that month a batch of return coolies
were landed at the port of Davipatam, six of whom had died of cholera on board-
ship, before landing. From this centre, Captain Guthrie the Superintendent of
Police at Madura, a very careful and intelligent observer of cholera phenomena,
declares that "cholera spread in lines clearly traced by the various main roads
throughout the Zemindaries of Ramnad and Shevagunga." From an examination
of the Police reports, there can be no doubt that cholera did about this time
appear in renewed vigour in the southern portion of the Madura District, and there
seems some reason to suppose that the outbreak in the town of Madura in August
was due to pilgrims who had entered the town by the southern road, along
which cholera had set in with vigour, after the dispersion of the return coolies
from Ceylon. Although there are not the slightest grounds for imputing to
Ceylon the origin of the recent cholera epidemic, yet it is quite consistent with all
that we know of the natural history of cholera, to suppose that the germs of the
disease gathered new strength in a soil that was not the breeding place of the
* The question wag only raised incidentally in regard to a virulent cholera at Davipatam amongst returned
emigrants. It is an undoubted fact that Ceylon is always invaded from India, and that it has no epidemic cholera of
its own capable of affecting other countries.—(W. 11. C.)