21
sections and castes built sheds ; and having made the people thoroughly under-
stand that every plague case must go to hospital and every infected house be
vacated for nine days for disinfection, I left the town in the charge of the
District Deputy Collector and the Assistant Surgeon on the 27th February.
Shortly afterwards I appointed a gunner on furlough as Chief Inspector on
Rs. 65 per mensem to put a little English stiffness into the administration, and
I believe he did excellent work. Within the month after my visit to Bhiwndi,
22 patients were taken to the Government hospitals and 34 to the caste
hospitals, and 94 families went out into the segregation sheds. The orders
therefore did not remain a dead letter, and Bhiwndi, as already observed, became
wholly free from plague before the middle of April.
79. What was done at Bhiwndi was being simultaneously done every-
where, and with the same results sooner or later. In every infected place
segregation sheds were erected and all infected houses compulsorily emptied for
disinfection. There was some murmuring at first, but no forcible resistance
anywhere, except at Vesáve, where a violent riot occurred on the 7th March.
The prejudice against allowing the sick to be taken to the Government hospitals
everywhere diminished rapidly, and practically disappeared in places like Thána,
Kurla and Bándra, where there were European doctors in charge. Elsewhere
the upper castes and some of the lower preferred to build private sheds and
sometimes rejected treatment by the official doctors; and no objection was
made to this as long as isolation was secured. Discovery of the sick was ensured
by house-to-house visitation and by the punishment under the Plague Rules of
those who failed to report cases. The task of emptying the houses was much
facilitated by the voluntary flight from the towns of most of the Páudharpeshas,
and in the villages of nearly all the inhabitants, A village wholly deserted
except by the dogs and the fowls was a common sight in all the affected
tálukas. So thoroughly did the people begin to understand the benefits of
segregation that in March and April whole villages would abandon their habi-
tations at the occurrence of one case of plague or even an alarm of dead rats ;
and I have known a case where those villagers who left on the first day would
not permit the approach to their camp of those who left the day after for fear
the latter should have absorbed any poison by their delay to fly. The fugitives
built themselves huts of grass or matting in the open fields round the village
and often lived in these without complaint for two or three months. It is
proof of the prosperity of the fisher classes (Kolis and Mangelas) which suffered
severely in the plague, that although they wholly stopped fishing when
turned out of their villages and spent most of their time getting drunk, they
were able to live for two or three months in this idle way without the slightest
sign of destitution. Yet prices were double their normal figure, and these
very people had six months before made the rise in prices a ground for piracy
and riot, and had been given nominal sentences for their crimes by the Court
of Sessions on the ground that they were driven to crime by imminent starva-
tion. But as a matter of fact in May their bins were still full of grain.
80. The hospitals consisted of barracks of matting or grass with thatched
roof, each barrack containing five or six compartments, about 8 x10 feet each,
sometimes divided by party walls and sometimes not. They were either wholly
or partially open in front, and in the back wall there was ample ventilation by
an open ridge under the eaves or windows. Until the weather grew hot the
general complaint about them was that they were too airy and cold ; but the
anitary Commissioner considered these qualities essential to plague hospitals.
One barrack was usually reserved for the observation of doubtful cases. The
sheds for the families of the sick were generally built near the plague sheds and
in much the same style; but they were rarely occupied anywhere. It was
found that the family of a sick man had seldom any great desire to go and live
near him, and usually preferred to build their own sheds in distant places.
The general indifference of the natives to their sick and dead, indeed, was a fact
which surprised most of us after the loud protestations when the rules first
came out, ; and if I were inclined to base a conclusion on my experience in this
plague, I should charge the natives with callousness towards their relations.
But allowance must be made for the fact that the plague has at all times ended
in destroying family ties.
Β 833—6