MUNICIPAL
DEPARTMENT.
SANITATION.
DARJEELING, THE 29TH JUNE 1908.
RESOLUTION No. 561T.—SAN.
READ—
The Report of the Sanitary Commissioner, Bengal, for the year 1907.
READ ALSO—
The Triennial Report on Vaccination in Bengal for the years 1905-06 to 1907-08.
Lieutenant-Colonel F. C. Clarkson, I.M.S., was in charge of the Department
throughout the year 1907, and the present reports are submitted by him.
2. Climatic conditions.—The total rainfall of the year was below the normal
throughout the Province, except in Orissa, where it was abnormal. It was not,
however, so much the shortage in total fall that adversely affected the people as
the very unequal distribution, and the cessation of rain at an unusually early date.
3. Births and Deaths.— Excluding the district of Angul, to which the
system of registration of births and deaths has not yet been extended, the
number of births registered in the Province was 1,905,425, as compared with
1,885,725 in the preceding year, or 37.70 per mille of population, against 37.32
per mille returned in 1906. The total number of deaths was 1,906,192, as com-
pared with 1,823,243 in the previous year and an average of 1,749,995 in the five
years 1902—1906. The ratio of deaths per mille was 37.72, against 36.08 in the
previous year and 34.63, the average of the previous quinquennium. In remark-
able contrast with these figures are those returned for the jails of the Province,
in which the death-rate per mille decreased from 24 in 1905 to 17.5 in 1907.
The jail statistics testify, as the Inspector-General of Prisons has stated,
to what can be done by persistent and common sense attention to sanitation.
The largest increase in deaths occurred under fever, cholera and plague. The
Sanitary Commissioner attributes the rise in mortality to the greater unhealthi-
ness of the year. He remarks that the very high prices of food grains that
prevailed affected general health in many districts by compelling the poorer
classes to have recourse to unsuitable food which lowered their vitality, so as
to render them more susceptible to fever and other prevailing diseases and more
liable to succumb to them. On the other hand, the fact that the total number of
deaths from fever was considerably less than in 1905, the increase in the total
number of births and the figures of infant mortality tend to show that these
causes did not operate universally. The experiment of testing the accuracy
of the vital statistics was continued throughout the year in certain parts of the
Burdwan district, with the usual result, viz., that in a number of cases the
entries as to the cause of death were found to be inaccurate.
4. Cholera.—The mortality from cholera was the highest recorded since
1901, the total number of deaths reported being 205,702, against 192,596 during
the preceding year, and 138,999, the average of the previous quinquennium. The
Sanitary Commissioner attributes this rise in mortality in a great measure to
the pollution of the water-supply and to the use of unwholesome food
by the poorer classes in consequence. of the high prices prevailing. The disease
was most virulent during the last five months of the year, especially in Septem-
ber. While no part of the Province enjoyed complete immunity, the districts
of Champaran, Darjeeling, Sambalpur, Singhbhum and Ranchi were compara-
tively free from the disease. Orissa suffered most severely, the three districts
of Cuttack, Balasore and Puri together reporting more than one-fourth of the