90
It may be put forward that this occurred because the disease had spent itself,
but controverting the statement we have the fact that between the 22nd and 30th
of the same month four cases of plague cropped up on the ground floor of Part II
(non-disinfected). It was then considered to put the same process in action against
a continuance of the disease on this floor to prevent the disease assuming the fearful pro-
portions it had in Part I. The whole of this ground floor of part II was accordingly
disinfected with the result that it has shown a clean bill of health from then to now.
It was then decided to disinfect in the same way the first floor of Part II, the only
part of the building not disinfected. Disinfection of this portion of Part II was started on
the 6th of May and in the course of our operations we discovered a case which on the
7th of May died and this was followed by another on the following morning. A death
from causes other than plague took place in this first floor on the 2Gth of May. Other-
wise the whole house, Parts I and II, has shown a clean bill of health up to date.
As further evidence of the efficacy of whole house disinfection and as showing the fact
that plague uncontrolled by it in the above house would have been expected to have con-
tinued and that further there was plague in the close neighbourhood of the house quoted.
I may put in No. 221, Ghellabhai Street, close by. Here in the month corresponding
to the one in which twenty-five cases occurred in 244, Ghellabhai Street (Part I), we had
six cases of plague which died.
Whole house disinfection was not tried with the result that in the twenty-two days
succeeding the date of disinfection of Part I of No. 244 (in which no further cases occurred)
we had in No. 221 six cases of death from plague.
We were then enabled to disinfect the building in its entirety since when it has
6hown a clean bill of health.
This house (No. 221) shows that plague was prevalent in the neighbour-
hood of No. 244 when we disinfected Part I of the same and from the fact of six
cases occurring within its walls in the twenty-two days immediately succeeding the day
on which disinfection was finished, in the neighbouring No. 244 that plague was not on
the downgrade in the neighbourhood, it further shows that the system of whole
house disinfection stayed the disease in itself as until that measure was adopted
the disease continued. We also deduce with an added certainty from the circums-
tances attaching to it that the same measure stopped the epidemic in No. 244.
It now remains for me to summarise the results of disinfection as carried out in
the Central District of Bombay. We have shown :—
That thorough and complete disinfection of a house in its entirety
(a) Prevents the continuance of an epidemic in that house even after the
disease has attained epidemic proportions.
(b) Obviates the occurrence of an epidemic in a house in which several
cases have occurred and in which house it is reasonable to suppose
that these cases are the starting point of a house epidemic by reason
of the previous bad plague history of that house, and as a result
has an effect on the disease generally.
That disinfection in general by destroying plague bacilli wherever carried out
has an effect on the number of deaths ascribable to an epidemic both during its rise
and its fall.
That thorough and systematic disinfection as carried out in the Central District is
superior in its results to a combination of the measures carried out during the previous
epidemics, viz.,
Evacuation.
Inoculation.
Haphazard and careless disinfection,