Licence: In copyright
Credit: Plague in India / by Charles Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![Five outbreaks of plague in a village near Dhanvar. [Population, -l.fifil.] Year. Worst month. I’laRue deaths. 1898 101 1899 1900-1.... January, February 229 1901-2 1902-3.... January, February 175 1903-4.... March 186 1904-5.... January ; 32 Total 722 Tliis village was a purely agricultural one, with no cattle trade, which is the common type on the rich black plain, or desh, extending eastward from Dharwar. The road all the way from the city passed through an unbroken expanse of wheat, jowar, and cotton, many of the wheat fields being of 20 acres. The area of the village in question was about 2,000 acres, but much of it was in the hands of a few large farmers. The patel of the village, a headman in stature as Avell as in name, farmed 100 acres, another resident farmed 200, and several who were resident in Dharwar City were also large own- ers and occupiers. About a fourth part of the villagers were labor- ers who held no land, many having lost it by mortgaging to the wealthier villagers or to pleaders in Dharwar, who had thus acquired their large farms. The village had once been defended by a wall and still retained two gates. Although it contained a number of well-to-do farmers, it did not contain a single pakka dwelling house. The houses Avere all of mud, many of them raised about a foot above the road on plinths of stone, which was got from a hill overlooking the village on the north. There was only one masonry structure—a variegated marble hall with open-top galleries for public meetings, which had been built recently by subscription. The streets or lanes were fairly wide, unpaved, and deep in dust. Few of the houses had verandas, and they Avere all equally common or mean. The usual ground plan Avas three rooms, one behind the other, Avith a back door opposite the street door, but AAuthout AvindoAvs, the cattle being kept in the apartment next the street. All round the backs of the houses ran a space Avhich Avas inclosed in places, traA^ersed by not oA^erclean foot- paths and OA^ergroAAUi Avith bushes; but in the dry Aveather it Avas not notably filthy, and there appeared to be no particular need for Avhat is called Aullage sanitation; at least, one did not see Avhere the sanita- tion Avas to begin, so long as the streets Avere unpaA'^ed, and the Avhole village, except the marble hall, built of mud. At the date of my Ausit in December the fifth epidemic of plague had only just begun, but it](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22406967_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
