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BENGAL PROVINCE, 1871.
The monthly mortality registered from cholera among the civil population
in 1871 is shown in the annexed tabular statement. The total of deaths is
14,510, against 21,691 in the preceding year. The ratio per mille of popu-
lation is 0.25 against 0.70 in 1870. The districts that suffered most severely
were those of Rajshahi, Murshidabad, Malda, and Bogra, and in all the months
of greatest prevalence were October, November, and December. The rains
were excessive and prolonged ; the number of rainy days beyond the average.
All these districts suffered from inundation; the disease was generally limited
to the submerged tracts and their neighbourhood, and privation, improper food,
and exposure to wet and cold are belived to have been greatly instrumental in
causing the mortality.
In Murshidabad district, a dam on the Bhagiratti river, 22 miles north of
Berhampur, gave away during the month of August and inundated a very
considerable tract of country in the interior of the district, carrying away
villages, roads, and bridges, and causing great distress and much sickness.
It was in these tracts that, as the water ran off and the land began to dry,
cholera appeared. Berhampur itself suffered little, but there were five cases
and four deaths in the cantonments under circumstances worth recording.
At the north-western corner of the cantonments is a block of buildings
consisting of three sets of quarters, parallel to the river, and each having a long
strip of garden behind it. The gardens of the end houses are much built
over but not that of the centre house, which, however, was unoccupied and the
garden uncared for * * * and there was a good deal of jungle in it * * * . In
the beginning of May, a coachman living in one of the out-houses of the
most northerly house was seized with cholera, but recovered. In June, the
gentlemen who occupied that house was attacked with the same disease, and
died. In October, a syce living in the compound of the house at the other
extremity of the block of three took cholera and died. In November, acom-
pounder living in a house at the bottom of the garden of the house No. 1 died
in three hours from the beginning of his attack. In all there were five cases in
the cantonment during the year, and all occurred in the too occupied houses
of this one block of three. The Sanitary Committee met, examined most
carefully the condition of the compounds, drains, &c., and the state of the
garden, but could find nothing to account for the disease.
The figures in the above statement show that cholera was prevalent in all
the other districts of the Bengal Province during the year 1871, but the
disease was generally mild in type, amenable to treatment, and showed little
tendency to spread. Owing to the unusually heavy rainfall in northern
India, the flood level of the Ganges, and of most of its tributaries, has
been higher than at any time during the last ten years, and in almost every
district considerable areas have been inundated either from overflow or from
the bursting of local bunds. The local rainfall has also been excessive,
and contributed to keep the country moist for a longer period than usual.
Over these flooded tracts, where villagers have been driven from their houses
and left shelterless, and their crops and property destroyed, there has been
necessarily much privation and exposure, and it is among such people and
in such tracts, during the period of their drying, that local outbreaks of
cholera have occurred. There are a few districts, however, in which the disease
was most prevalent and fatal during the past months, such as Rangpur,
which suffered most in April and May; Tipperah and Dhaka in March and
April; Gya in June and July; and Shahabad in May and June. In Dhaka,
where cholera existed throughout March, the disease broke out among an
assemblage of 400,000 pilgrims, chiefly females; who had come to bathe in the
Brahmaputra at Nangalband; fortunately it spread but little among them,
and there is no record of its introduction by them into other parts of the
district. * * * In the Chittagong Sanitary Report, Civil Surgeon Dr. F. F.
Allen, mentions an outbreak of cholera on board a steamer among 300
coolies destined for the Lushai expedition. In this case overcrowding, filthy
habits, and caste prejudice (by causing to fast for long periods rather than
cook on board) seem to have been predisposing causes.