6
the plague is contagious and that prompt segregation and disinfection will
suppress it, explains all the known facts, while the other theory explains none.
Thana Municipality : Po-
pulation 17,459.
15. Thána (Sálsette).—The information for this and the next places is
taken chiefly from Dr. Anderson s reports. As at
Kalyán great numbers of Bombay fugitives had come
to Thána and were daily going in and out of Bombay.
As already mentioned the first imported case known was that of a Lohána from
Mándvi, on October 8th. He was sent to hospital and infected nobody. The
next case detected was a Hindu boy also from Bombay on December 8th. The
third and fourth cases were detected on the 9th January in the persons of a Bania
and his wife who had come from Mándvi about a week before they got sick.
They were not removed from their house. The fifth case came from Chinchpogli
on January 17th and the sixth on January 20th. In this last case the man had
come from Bombay to a neighbouring village a few days before, but was driven
out by the villagers when they found he was sick. The seventh case was imported
from Dádar on January 25th. The eighth was that of a Parsi woman who had left
Bombay 22 days before and had not left Thána since ; but her relations went in
and out. This somewhat resembles the case of the Bhiwndi Sub-Overseer's son
in Kalyán, and several other cases will be noted below where infection had ap-
parently been conveyed by the clothes of a healthy person. The ninth case
occurred on February 2nd and was called the first local case ; but the victim,
though a resident of Thána, went daily to the Custom House in Mándvi, where no
doubt he contracted the disease. The tenth case came from Bombay on February
3rd : the eleventh was similar to No. 8 above, inasmuch as the patient had been a
fortnight in Thána and was apparently infected by her relation who went daily to
Bombay, though none of them were reported sick. Hitherto no local resident was
known to have caught the plague in Thána, but on February 7th a Brahmin who
had supplied water to the ninth case got the plague, and Dr. Anderson regards
this as the first undoubted local case. On the 8th and 9th three more local cases
occurred among Brahmins and Banias and thenceforward local cases were numer-
ous. Here as in Kalyán the local cases were preceded by a large number of
imported ones, and as the death-rate for December was nearly double and that of
January more than treble that of the previous year, it is possible that many im-
ported cases had been successfully concealed. But considerable allowance must
be made for the grossly inaccurate registration of previous years and the large
increase of the population.
It will have been noticed that there were intervals of precisely a month
between the first, second and third imported cases. I take this to be evidence of
the inefficiency of the Railway examination under the paralyzing conditions of
the telegram already quoted. Few cases were detected at the stations at any-
time in the first months. The last case of plague in Thána was reported on the
28th May 1897. Altogether 149 local cases occurred, a figure of which the
smallness is inexplicable if insanitary conditions could create plague. The
percentage of local cases on normal population was only 0 8. So far as local
conditions can create susceptibility to plague (which is a different thing), I should
be inclined to ascribe the comparative immunity of Kalyán and Thána to their
scanty water-supply. Kalyán depends chiefly on wells and Thána on a small
Tank ; so that neither town is in the way of becoming water-logged and thereby
feverish.
16. Bándra (Salsette)—Is for all practical purposes a part of Bombay
Bándra Municipality : Po-
pulation 18,317.
and it is impossible to trace the sequence of local to
imported cases with the same clearness as can be done
in Kalyán and Thána. Before December only two
cases were reported—one a Mhár on October 26th, and the other, a Khoja, on
November 24th, and both were imported from Bombay. But as the mortality in
November was nearly double that of the previous year, it may be assumed that
a number of plague cases had escaped notice in that month. Five or six
thousand refugees from Bombay are said to have sought sheltor in Bándra, and
as probably half the ordinary population of the town has its daily business in
Bombay the means of infection were ample, and infection was inevitable. The
first local cases which occurred on December 3rd were those of two Native