Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-05-12
ENGLAND'S TROUBLE
In SAD INDIA
Wasted by Famine the People are Now
Stricken With That Most Ter
rible Of Diseases, the Plague.

'FrOm famine and peStilence, good
| Lord deliver us!"
So prayed the English Queen in the
Chapel Royal, while tears rainel Down
her furrowed cheeks and care bowed
her shoulders.
The good woman had just held, the
papers told us. a meeting of her advisers
to consider means by which the plague
of India, now raging so fiercely, coull
be stamped OUT; and she had also con-
ferred with her ways and means commit
tee upon the sending of a sum of money
for the relief of those whose heads of
families had been stricken. In previous
years there We're large private subscrip-
tons, but this year all the money went
to the Cape.
So England, torn with bloodshed in
South Africa and worried over the move
ments of Russia and France, is menaced
by a still more deadly foe than that of
war, namely the terrible plague of India.
which breaks out every year, but this
year has come with a thousandfold the
violence of former seasons.
Lord and Lady Curzon, at the Begin
ming of the plague, issued an order that
all should be inoculated. incubation is
almost a preventive, but not quite: yet
so far does it arrest the progress of the
disease that even those who take the
plague, after incubation, are not serious
ly i'll and survive the ordeal through
which so few pass alive.
But the natives refused to be inocu-
lated. A rumor spread among them that
it was the injection of a demon into their
bodies and that those who were inocu-
lated would never be sane again.
Everybody knows how vaccination acts
A day or two after the injection of the
serum the arm of the patient becomes
lintlamed, sickly feelings pass through the
SYSTEM; and for a week, and sometimes
two or three, the patient is half i'll, while
the arm goes on in Inflammation until
suddenly the process of healing begins.
FRIGHTENED NATIVES.
When the natives of India had OBJ
served the action of the serum, they be-
came afraid of it, and no amount of per-
%suasion could convince them of it's harm
|lessness. They fled affrighted from their
homes and sought refuge in the passes
of the country: some took up arms; few
tribes submitted peaceably.
Then came Lord Curzon's stroke of
diplomacy. He issued a decree that none
should be allowed to escape incubation;
and announced that he himself and his
lady would undergo the operation with
all the rest, at the government post.
On the mentioned day he drove there
with Lady Curzon by his side in all the
state possible to the representatives of
Her Majesty, and so attracted much
notice. On alighting they We're con-
Quoted into the center of the thrOng and
there, with a few deft strokes of the
needle, the incubation was performed.
That afternoon the government post was
crowded and all in Bombay We're made
plague proof.
Residents of other countries can have
no idea of the terrible havoc caused by
this most fearful of modern epidemics.
In Bombay city alone, during the three
years of plague, there have been no fewer
than so, 200 cases, and out of this number
the enormous proportion of a.. 500 have
ended fatally. During the worst period
as many as 300 and 400 natives died in
a day.
Up to this year Europeans have been
comparatively immune from plague, but
in Poona, during the past few months.
over a dozen Europeans have fallen VIC
tins to the terrible disease.
SPECIAL INDUCEMENTS.
There is no known cure for plague, but
incubation has proved the best means to
ward off the disease.
The government of India is doing all it
can to encourage the natives to be inocu-
lated, and in spite of prejudice against
the operation large numbers are being in
oculated daily. In some parts of the
country the natives prefer to die rather
than seek the remedy which medical
science has discovered. Natives who
awe been lnOculated are exempt from
certain restrictions meted out to the UNI
inoculated. They escape medical exami-
nation and detention in segregation
camps, which Is rigidly enforced other
I, wise. Then, too, they receive copper
coins to the value of about a penny if
they undergo the operation, the children
, being given sweets.
Many officials have undergone the
operation, just to prove to the natives
how harmless the process is.
The arm upon which the incubation is
to be made is first washed with an anti
septic, a small pad of lint is placed on
the arm, the instrument inserted through
it, and the serum injected. Thus there
is no possible means of outside ~contagion.
The lint is antiseptic, and the instrument
is streilized; so that nothing but the
READY SWEPT BY FAMINE. AND :
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