( 25 )
BENGAL PROVINCE, 1868.
There are no statistics available to show the monthly prevance of cholera
among the civil population of this province for the year 1868. In this year
the office of Sanitary Commissioner for the Bengal Province was created.
From the first annual report of the Sanitary Commissioner for Bengal for
1868, the following particulars regarding the prevalence of cholera in the
province for that year are gathered :—" The Bengal Province, or Lower Provinces
of the Bengal Presidency, comprises Bengal Proper, Behar, and Orissa."
The Civil Surgeon of Howrah writes :—" Cholera is endemic, it also occurs
epidemically ; *** diarrhoea very prevalent." The population is estimated at
above 564,000, and its density at about 1,025 to the square mile. On an
average the sub-soil water is found at the depth of about 12 feet from the
surface. No wells are used in the district. Tanks are numerous. Cholera
prevails more at the beginning of the hot and cold seasons than at other times.
The Civil Surgeon of Hugli writes :—“ In this district fever of a severe
intermittent type is of an endemic nature, its attacks are confined mostly to
the commencement and breaking up of the rains, and also to the beginning
of the winter months, and to the periods of the reaping of the rice-crops.***
Cholera shows itself at times in a severe form ; frequently it is of a
sporadic nature, directly traceable to exposure to damp and bad food."***The
population of the district is estimated at 1,600,000, and its density to the
square mile at about 1,100. Some times the Damudah inundates the country
and greatly enriches the soil, but as a rule the inundations are disastrous ;
both man and beast, and even entire villages are apt to be swept away in a
few hours. Water is found in the dry season between 18 and 20 feet, and in
the rainy weather between 7 and 8 feet below the surface. "Wells are not
used. Tanks are numerous. The few wells that do exist are of masonry,
from 20 to 40 feet deep, and generally protected by railings or a low wall.
Jessore —Cholera is believed to have prevailed more largely in the district
subsequently to 1867 than previous to that year. “Whether the disease was,
as it undoubtedly is now, an annual product, or at any rate a phenomenon
of yearly occurrence to a greater or less extent, it is certain that in that year
a most virulent visitation of cholera occurred, and that ever since then the
district has been the seat of virulent outbreaks of the disease. Jessore also
participated, along with other districts adjoining, in the outbreaks of the so-
called epidmic fever which prevailed from 1860 to 1865. Indeed, this peculiar
manifestation of disease appears to have had its rise in the district." In the
autumn of 1846 there was an outbreak of fever in Jessore station and the
whole of the neighbouring district during the last week of October and the
whole of the month of November. The "amount of sickness and fever" is
described as “ perfectly appaling, and disease was not only virulent as regards
the number who were attacked, but the mortality was most excessive. In
the city of Jessore, which contains a population of about 6,000 people, about
10 deaths occurred it was computed daily, nearly three-fourths of the domestic
servants and about the same number of the law officers connected with the
law courts were laid up. The European officers suffered to nearly the same
extent ; out of 33 European or Eurasian inhabitants, 22 were all under medical
treatment during the month. The epidemic from which they all suffered
was a very peculiar description of fever, which in general commenced as a
common quotidian intermittent, but which after the few first days, from the
1st to 5th, assumed a continued type, the remissions or intermissions being
scarcely perceptible and the cold stage being merely a species of transient
horripilation and shivering, which only lasted a few minutes, which was
followed by great heat of skin. This was only occasionally followed by a
cold, clammy perspiration. The complications which were observed were
principally of the head and chest, and as frequently of the latter as the former.
There can be no doubt that the great amount of sickness was solely to be ascribed
to the lateness of the rains and ¿he sudden drying up of the river Bhyrab.'
The Civil Surgeon of Jessore, Doctor Kenneth McLeod, adduces the above
extract from an old report, because he is " certain that if a similar outbreak
were to occur now, the disease would be called ' epidemic fever, ' and to show
κ