No. 1371 OF 1897.
FROM
THE FIRST ASSISTANT COLLECTOR,
Sátára ;
To
THE COLLECTOR or SA'TA'RA,
Sátára, 12th July 1897.
SIB,
With reference to your No. 3895, dated 30th June 1897, asking me to submit
a report regarding measures adopted for the suppression of the bubonic plague
in my division, I have the honour to state as follows :—
2. The plague fortunately took no real hold in any part of my charge, and
the measures taken were mostly preventive.
3. I have reason to think that daring the latter part of last year, espe-
cially before any considerable attention was drawn to the existence of plague
except in Bombay, many people who had gone from villages here to labour in
Bombay, feeling ill and being in reality smitten with plague, returned home and
died of plague in their villages, the deaths being ascribed to fever and the
attention of the authorities being consequently not drawn to the matter. I
made close enquiries in many villages which I visited in the course of my tour.
I was mach surprised at the extent of emigration from this district. In almost
all the poorer villages and in many of the wealthier ones some persons are in
the habit of going yearly to Bombay for labour. These generally go in the non-
cultivating season and return intime to till their lands. Among these emigrants
there was of course a panic when the existence of plague became widely known
in Bombay and they returned in haste to their villages, some with the infection
on them. I ascertained this by examining the death registers and finding in
them entries of the deaths from " fever " of persons who had newly returned
from Bombay, this fever being almost certainly plague.
4. Fortunately it seems that, in the absence of certain conditions the
nature of which it has been impossible to ascertain, the dry air of the Deccan is
not congenial to the plague germ. Otherwise I cannot account for the fact that
with plague raging in Bombay, multitudes of people returned to their villages,
many probably affected with plague, but these only communicated the disease
to others in the rarest instances, though their nearest relatives, lived in the
atmosphere, touched their clothes, probably nursed them till death and finally
conducted their funeral ceremonies.
5. The exceptional villages in which the plague became endemic I will
now deal with. These were Sángwi in Koregaon Táluka, Akhad'e-, Waluth,
Panas and Khádshi in Jáoli Táluk a and, I believe, one or two cases in the town
of Wái (of the latter I have not accurate information). Of these villages the only
ones of which the plague took any hold were Sángwi, Akhade and Waluth. I
visited all these villages at the time when they were affected but could find no
reason why the plague should have taken a hold in them rather than other villages.
Indeed, so capricious was the disease that in Akhade, it attacked the hamlet and
carried off in a few days 25 per cent, of th,e population, while the village which
is almost contiguous with the hamlet remained untouched. In Waluth too, the
hamlet was attacked while the village, not half a mile off, had not a case. The
villagers of Sángwi and the inhabitants of the infected hamlets of Akhade and
Waluth very wisely dispersed of their own accord to their fields when their homes
had become tainted and thus the disease died out. I entered the hamlet of Akhade
to find one old man only as a sort of care-taker. I remonstrated with him and
pointed out the danger, but he preferred to stay saying that if any one further
was taken he was an old man and it was his turn. The attack in Akhade
Wáluth, Panas and Khadshi, which all lie close together, seems to have origi-
nated in the death at Panas of one man who had been smitten in Bombay and
whose funeral was attended by people from the other villages.
6. I cautioned the pátils of neighbouring villages not to allow persons
from those abovementioned to enter without some days' surveillance outside, but
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