274
[CHAP. IX.
a washerman who had come from Sháhápur. He had previously undergone inoculation,
but was suffering from fever on his arrival. Again, on the same day, a case was
discovered in a house immediately adjoining that in which dead rats had been discovered. This
was the first, indigenous case. On the 16th December ] 897 an imported case had been dis-
covered. It is to be noted that neither of these two imported cases became centres of infection.
They occurred in houses far away from the one in which dead rats were found, and it was
not till well on in the epidemic that people living in houses near them were attacked. From
the house in which the rats died the disease spread slowly but steadily, proceeding for the
most part in a northerly direction, but sending off off-shoots to the west and south-west.
At first partial evacuation was tried, but it did not stay the progress of the disease.
Complete evacuation was, therefore, resolved upon, and on the 17th of February all the
inhabitants were in the fields. Re-occupation took place on the 22nd April. After re-occupa-
tion, 6 cases, 4 of which ended fatally, occurred, and 2 occurred, both fatal, among the inhabit-
ants of the huts in the fields who had not returned with the others. The total number of
cases, inclusive of those occurring after re-occupation, was 59 and of deaths 56. The per-
centage of deaths to attacks was, therefore, 95 . 76.
Halsi.
Population—2,545.
Plague was imported into Halsi by direct human importation from Khánápur : the first
case being that of a Ivhanapur man attacked on the 11th and
who died the same day. There was another- case on the 12th,
but the disease did not re-appear again till the 2nd February,
when two cases occurred. It was not, however, till the 8th tnat plague was actually discovered.
When once the disease established itself, it spread rapidly ; and during the nine days between
the 7th and 15th February, 20 cases—19 deaths were reported. The disease was then almost
wholly confined to the Sonar caste, to which the original importers belonged : and the per-
sons attacked were all living in one quarter of the village.
Half the village was evacuated on the 20th February, the infected streets having been
previously cleared, and the other half on the 1st March. The effect of evacuaticn was to
stop the disease at once, and there were no cases between the 25th February and the 20th
March. The case which occurred on the latter date was due to infection from Nándgad, the
person attacked having gone to that village and stayed with an infected family there. Mean-
while, the infected houses, together with the adjoining ones, had been thoroughly disinfected,
cleaned and opened ; while the remaining houses in the village had been opened up and
cleaned by the villagers themselves. This they had done in a very thorough manner, and
there was not a single house in the village which had not been thoroughly opened to light and
air for at least ten days before the 25th of March. On that date a heavy thunderstorm broke
over the town, and the Resident Plague Authority took it upon himself to allow the people to
re-occupy the village. Plague immediately re-appeared, and it is noteworthy that the house
in which it appeared was situated quite close to the house last affected before evacuation.
63 cases—56 deaths were reported from this village from January to June 1898.
Second Epidemic (June 1898—April 1899).—From April to July 1898 there was
scarcely any plague reported from Belgaum Town—35 cases and 26 deaths in all—and an
average of about 40 cases a week from the District, and it was hoped that the disease would
die out altogether. But this hope was not realized, for a steady rise in the mortality
showed only too clearly that Belgaum was doomed to suffer another epidemic : an
epidemic of greater severity and longer duration than the first.