Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, September 1899: Vol. LV, May to October, 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, September 1899: Vol. LV, May to October, 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The bacillus of the plague has undoubtedly found Calcutta quite as
well prepared for its reception as Bombay. In discussing a medical
report on the sanitary condition of Calcutta, the Pioneer Mail makes
the following statement: "London, with its population of over
4,000,000, has about 36,000 people to the square mile. In the thirteen
wards of Calcutta there are only four below this figure; the remainder
have from 46,000 to 144,000 per square mile, three wards containing
actually over 100,000. Colootolah is most densely populated; the
houses are literally crammed with people. One case is quoted where 250
persons were living in a space that should accommodate only 50. In a
hut seven feet in length, breadth, and height five men were found, and
several instances are given where similar conditions obtained. In our
barracks 600 cubic feet per man is the minimum space allowed. In these
_bastis_ the space runs from 157 to 49 cubic feet. This would be bad
enough if everything were clean and sweet in and about the huts, but,
as the medical board puts the case, 'here we find an allowance per
head going as low as practically one thirtieth of that given in
barracks, and no ventilation, with filth _ad libitum_ both in the room
and in its surroundings, to say nothing of the filthy persons of its
occupants, the sewage in the adjacent drains, and the accumulated
filth in the neighboring latrines; and to this may be added the fact
that the subsoil on which the huts are built is soaked through and
through with sewage matters and littered with garbage and filth of all
kinds.' The narrow gullies which give access to these huts are in
keeping with the general character of the _bastis_, and we may well
wonder that epidemic disease is not always present."
The probabilities are that the plague will continue in Bombay,
Calcutta, and Madras until it dies out from want of susceptible
material. It is not at all likely, with the conditions in these
cities, such as have already been described, that sanitary measures
sufficiently energetic to destroy the bacillus will be resorted to.
For some years to come these cities are likely to harbor the
infection, and will remain, as they are now, nurseries for the
disease.
The plague has not confined itself to the large cities of India, but
has spread all over that country. It has extended into the
northwestern provinces, has crossed the frontier, and passed into
Baluchistan and Afghanistan. In many of the interior cities it has
proved quite as fatal, in proportion to the population, as at Bombay
and Calcutta. At Poonah the mortality has during some weeks been as
high as eighty per cent of the cases, and four hundred deaths a week
have been reported. At Sholapore, in the Punjab, far to the northwest
of Bombay, the disease has prevailed in epidemic form.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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