3
As pel-
Printed statement for
week ending 30th July
1897
'Commissioner's statement
above ...
Difference . . .
Imported.
Cases,
133
135
2
Deaths,
128
129
1
Indigeous.
Cases.
1,158
3,326
168
Deaths.
1,018
1,120
102
As per
•Collector's Statement A...
Printed statement for
week ending 30th July
1897
Difference . . .
Imported.
Cases.
150
135
*15
Deaths.
134
129
5
Indigenous.
Cases.
1,422
1,437
15
Deaths.
1,176
1,189
13
These figures are tabulated from the printed weekly statements issued from
the Secretariat. The figures for the
Ratnágiri District agree with those
given in the table at ' paragraph 11 of
the Collector's report. Those for
Kolába given in the above statement
do not tally with those appearing in
the printed statement. The difference
as per margin is due to erroneous
figures having crept in, in the printed
statement for the week ending 28th May,
where the totals of the previous week
under " Indigenous " have been brought
forward as 1,049 and 918 instead of 1,217
and 1,020 respectively. The figures,
inclusive of those for Janjira State
furnished by the Collector of Kolába
in the Statement A accompanying his
report, differ * from the total together
for Kolába and Janjira as given in the
printed statement up to the 30th July
1897.
6. In the Ratnágiri District the cases were isolated and occurred indepen-
dently of one another. As pointed out by the Collector, the epidemic scarcely
ever travelled from one village to another or even from one quarter to another
of the same village., It was only in the village of Ladghar in the Dápoli táluka
that the number of indigenous cases was considerable. Here the plague poison
was apparently brought in the clothes and other things belonging to a person
who had died of plague in Bombay- The things arrived at the village from
Bombay on the 23rd of January 1897. Immediately afterwards dead rats began
to be noticed about the house into which the infection had been brought. A
person attacked with fever died on 22nd February. Another person in the same
house caught fever on the 5th March and died the next day. Four more deaths
occurred in that house and three in a neighbouring one before a formal report on
the subject reached the authorities. Segregation was resorted to and was
attended with good results. In all there were a<7 attacks and 39 deaths.
7. The Collector of KoMba states that the first ascertained death from
plague in the district occurred at Alibág on the 27th December 1896 and the
next on the 7th February 1897. But it would appear from the first printed
weekly statement that the first imported case took place at Mahád so early as
October 1896, followed by 8 cases and deaths in the following months. Mr. Gray
says that whenever the disease appeared in the district, whether it became
epidemic or not, the plague was invariably due to connection with Bombay or
other infectious centres. The places where the disease took root are Alibág,
Panvel, Uran and Theronda, a village near Bevdanda. It was difficult, as remarked
by the Collector, to ascertain which were actually the first indigenous cases.
At Alibág more than one death from plague had occurred before the cause of the
mortality was openly recognized. No doubt the first case in any locality must
be an imported one unless the plague poison possesses a self-generating power.
The town of Pen, which was exposed to infection from Panvel and Alibág as
well as from Bombay, unaccountably escaped with one indigenous case in May,
though a few imported cases had occurred in the town at an earlier date.
Mr. Gray quotes one curious instance of a death in Vádawli in the Mángaon
táluka, where a person, in attempting to cure another by the rough native method
of wet-cupping, which involves the implication of the mouth to the bubo, took
the poison into his own system and died. All the tálukas and rnahals of the
district were visited by the epidemic to a greater or less extent. The total
number of villages in the district in which the disease appeared was 69 including
Mátherán, and of those in the Janjira State 8. Eevdanda had the largest number
(416) of indigenous cases, with a correspondingly large number (893) deaths.
In Alibág, Kevdancla, Panvel, Mora, Ohanji and Murad the plague caused very
heavy mortality. These results bear out Mr. Gray's observation that coast villages