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(3) Since the abolition of compulsory removal of plague cases to hospitals, the
admissions into the Community Hospitals have fallen off considerably, and a large
number of those which were open last year did not admit any cases during the
year under report. The Municipal Hospitals, however, retained their popularity,
and the returns show a large amount of good work performed.
(4) The principal Municipal Hospitals were the Arthur Road Hospital under
Khan Bahadur Dr. N. H. Choksey, the Maratha Hospital under Dr. Dhargalkar,
the Modikhana Hospital under Dr. Turkhad, and the Mahim Hospital under
Dr. Dady Burjor. The Municipality also maintained some wards for Mahrattas in the
Hindu Fever Hospital for the whole of the period under report, and the Sunni
Julahi and General Mohamedan Hospitals (Madanpura and Northbrook Gardens
respectively) for a part of that period. The two last were closed at the end of
January 1901, and the patients, with some of the establishments and the equipment,
were sent to the Maratha Hospital, which had been converted into a General
Plague Hospital, and, in which, ample facilities existed for providing separate
accommodation for different communities. The scheme of in-corporating these
three hospitals into one worked satisfactorily.
(5) 2,400 plague cases were admitted into the four principal Municipal
Hospitals during the year, and besides these, 2,170 cases of Relapsing Fever and
785 cases of Cholera. In addition, the Arthur Road Hospital admitted 95 cases of
Small-pox, 10 of Measles and 74 of Chicken-pox.
(6) Appended below are condensed summaries of the reports of each of the
Medical Officers in charge of the Municipal and private hospitals, together with
tables furnishing Statistical details regarding the cases admitted into each. For
the purposes of this report, however, the statistical points in the following paragraph
are taken from the returns of the four principal Municipal hospitals only, as they
show the largest amount of regular work clone, and are more generally reliable in
detail than those from many of the others, some of which were not wholly in charge
of fully qualified Medical men.
(7) The case mortality from Plague was 7448 per cent. ; the percentage of
mortality among males 63·17, among females 59·98 and among children 51·46 ; that
among infants below 1 year of age 28·87 ; among persons in each successive decade
up to 40 years of age 55·84, 70·27, 70·74 and 68·12 ; and among persons above 40
years of age 77·71 ; that in Pneumonic Plague 98·07 ; and that in Bubonic Plague
complicated by secondary Pneumonia 75·66.
(8) We are not in a much better position to judge, further, regarding the
effects of Professor Lustig's Curative Serum this year than we were last year,
owing to the fact that only a limited number of experiments was possible during
the period under report. This was on account of a dearth of serum owing partly to
unavoidable delay in the construction of a suitable venesection jacket for new and
restive horses and the procuring of some necessary apparatus from Europe, and,
partly, to the fact that the unusual virulence in the type of the disease during this
epidemic, rendered it necessary that at least three times the quantity of serum as
was found to be sufficient for each case last year was required this year before any
visible result could be obtained.
As will be seen from the details in the summaries of the reports of the
Arthur Road and Maratha Hospitals below, the treatment gave better results than
other methods of treatment, but the advantage gained was less than in previous
years, being only 1·53 per cent, at the Arthur Road, and 4·59 per cent, at the
Maratha Hospital. These results, however, are not to be despised, especially
when it is remembered that the advantage gained at the Maratha Hospital
was at a time when the percentage of mortality among cases treated by
other methods was 88·8. The treatment acts best in cases where there are not