KHANDESH
DISTRICT.]
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Mr. Cumine had before our arrival on the 5th instant organized four search parties, and
we wired to Bombay for a gang of 20 coolies with all appliances and disinfectants. They
will arrive to-morrow morning. Eighty inore coolies will be entertained for disinfection
and to learn the work. Mr. Priestley, of the Police Department, has been placed in charge
of the operations, and he was sent to Násik on the evening of the 5th to make himself
acquainted with the system of disinfection and the practical work: carried out in connec-
tion with an infected locality. One of the recently arrived private practitioners from
England will be posted to Jalgaon.
The appearance of the disease at Jalgaon renders necessary the introduction at
Bhusával of measures calculated to prevent the spread of the disease towards the north.
The measures which will be adopted in Jalgaon may be effective as regards the
inhabitants of the town, but, should other places in the district become infected, as
travellers from infected districts avoid by road Manmád Station, then travel by rail to
Bhusával and the north, it is evident that there will be a great liability to the extension
of the disease to these parts. To enable us to take the necessary steps we visited
Bhusával and arranged with the local Railway authorities for the erection of an obser-
vation camp at Bhusával. There is an excellent site for such a camp on railway
ground near the station, and the District Traffic Superintendent informed us that he
could construct huts made of sleepers, sufficient to accommodate 500 people within 24
hours.
He wired to the Agent, G. I. P. Railway, for the necessary sanction to this pro-
posal. When everything is ready, booking of passengers between Manmád and
Bhusával, except at Bhadli, a small Station between Jalgaon and Bhusával, will be
open to every one, and all suspected travellers will be detained in the camp at Bhusával
for a period not exceeding ten days. The officer in charge to have full powers of
exemption and detention. The clothes and personal effects of those detained will be
disinfected.
The Municipal Committee, under the supervision of Mr. Cumine, will also arrange
for the establishment of a segregation camp for the residents of the town in the event
of plague appearing in it. The Plague Hospital and segregation huts are already in
construction, and the site for a health camp has been selected in the neighbourhood.
The place appears to be at present free from the disease.
An Assistant Collector will be placed in charge at Bhusával, and we have applied
for the services of a Staff Corps Officer to work under him."
With plague indigenous at Jalgaon and a certain number of people leaving it, it
was to be expected that several cases of plague imported from Jalgaon would be heard of in
villages. Accordingly, on the 28th of December 1897, the Collector reports :—
" A man who had gone about 8 days ago from Jalgaon to Datála in the Jalgaon
Táluka died there on the 26th. His death was sudden, and so I assume it to have been
plague. He had not been admitted into the village, but was living in a hut of jowári
straw in the fields. The Mámlatdár has been to the place and burnt the man's clothes,
and segregated the people with him, and demolished the hut."
On the following day he again reports :—
" A man who left Jalgaon a few days ago for Bhadgaon in the Páchora Táluka, and was
kept in a segregation hut when he arrived there, has shewn signs of plague."
So also a week later (7th January 1898) :—
"It has been learnt that about 8 days ago a man, Bhavdu Rámchandra Wáni, aged about
16, went from Jalgaon to the village of Chincholi and died there in about 4 days. The
cause of death is unknown, but I have assumed it to be plague. And the Mámlatdár had
been out there and segregated the people of the house and the neighbours."
Fortunately none of the cases mentioned did as a fact infect the village into which it
was imported.
On the 15th of January 1898 the Collector thus reviews the situation in Jalgaon :—
"As I have not yet sent any detailed account of the outbreak, I beg to do so now.
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