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one death has occurred in the house in question : that is stated to have been from
ordinary causes and it took place on the 4th of May. The reason of our whole house
disinfection programme being put in force in this house was the occurrence of six deaths
within the month immediately preceding disinfection.
Another such case is 512, Memonwada Road in which twenty-one deaths have taken
place between the 29th of June 1900 and the 31st of March 1901 (a period of eight months)-
five of them at short intervals in the last twenty-six days of March 1901. As a method of
putting a stop to the epidemic of which these five cases were the start we decided on whole
house disinfection. The result is that up to the date of writing (the 24th of June) only two
deaths have taken place in the building-one on the 11th of May not due to plague, and
one on the 19th of June suspicious of plague.
To illustrate the fact that whole house disinfection can nip an epidemic in the bud
while the neglect of that measure enables the disease to continue in a house next door,
I will put in evidence the two houses, 15 and 13, Memonwada Cross Lane.
In No. 15, four deaths occurred at short intervals from the 1st to the 18th of
February. In No. 13, four deaths occurred at intervals between these same dates,
No. 15 was then disinfected in its entirety with the result that from then to the
time of report only one death has taken place in it from ordinary causes and there has
been no recurrence of plague.
No. 13 was not so treated and it took until the 17th or 18th of March (a whole
month longer) for the lessons of No. 15 to reach the intelligence of those left in No. 13, by which
time another seven deaths had been added to their previous four. We were enabled to
disinfect the place on the 18th of March but two deaths followed a few days later, said not
to be due to plague but much more likely to be cases incubating or actually suffering while
disinfection was being carried out.
That this thorough type of disinfection now under discussion is both essential and
plays a successful rôle where you have the primary source of the disease not in the places
where the deaths or cases occur is evidenced by the case of 104, Tank Street already
cited, where a very severe epidemic, indeed, was put a stop to (after claiming a large number
of victims) by its adoption to the extent of thoroughly disinfecting and clearing out a
boarded-up and unoccupied loft (over the rooms in which the plague was continually
occurring) and in which a large number of dead rats and abandoned bedding from old
plague patients were found.
Its adoption, too, in the case of a house in Mahomedkhan Pakhadi resulted in the
putting a stop to recurring cases of plague therein due to the fact that dead rats and
infected clothing ware stored in a room in the affected floor.
An interesting house in connection with this style of disinfection is 244, Ghellabhai
Street. It illustrates the fact that an epidemic can be stopped by chemical disinfection
while in the close neighbourhood the disease is making strong headway. It will first
be necessary to give an idea of the configuration of the house which consists of
two long parallelograms united by a bridge at the level of the first floor. Part I consists
of a ground floor and two upper floors while Part II consists of a ground and an upper
floor which hare access to each other only by way of an outer stair leading to the bridge
which unites Part I and II at the level of their first floors.
In Part I from the 14th of December 1900 to the 13th of April 1901 thirty-two
deaths took place—twenty-five of them in the last thirty days of the period mentioned—
to such an extent, had the disease made headway, that the Assistant District Officer
actually wrote proposing evacuation of the whole building as disinfection on the ordinary
lines was apparently powerless to stop the disease.
The parallelogram ( Part I ) in which all these deaths took place was, however,
thoroughly disinfected in its entirety by myself on the 12th and 13th of April. The
last death or case of disease which had occurred in this part of the building occurred
on the day on which disinfection was finished. Since then the building so far as this
disinfected part goes has been quite free from disease.
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