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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![382 inhabitants being in camp near their fields about a quarter of a mile away. They had taken alarm from the number of dead rats found, and the deaths of 36 persons in October, November, and December, and from the recollection of their first plague epidemic two years before, when ITl died in the village. At Bijapur City I was told by a high native official that, if the infection became active another year, the temporary cam]) round the railway station would become a jier- manent residential subui’b, so that the area within the walls would be deserted for the second time in its histor3^ This evacuation is at the people’s own initiative and at their own expense, which many of them can ill afford. The same thing was going on at Belgaum, where several thousands went out to camp in the evening and returned to their work in the bazaars and offices in the morning. At Dharwar a small beginning had been made toward permanent evacuation. The government had given a piece of vacant ground to the municipality, which had sold it by auction in lots at a very low price, and a new street of some forty houses, called Gibb street, after the collector, had been run up. At Pooi^ 7,000 or moi’e Avere in camp along the sides of suburban roads, or on the various maidans of the cit3. At Boinba}^ there Avere three large health camps along the sea- Avard side of the island as far north as Mahim. In a group of auI- lages of the Baroda State near Naosari, the cultivators had built loftA' and commodious huts near their aa’cIIs and fields, to Avhich they, had removed their bedsteads, chests, and other furniture, and in Avhich theA and their children and their bullocks AA’ere not unhappy. The Aveather after the rains is so fine throughout the Bombaj’^ Presi- dency that there is no hardship Avhatever in camping out. It is othei’Avise in the earlier part of the plague season of the north- Avest, of AA'hich I shall gii’e a single instance from the Punjab. I Avent one daA'^ Avith the medical officer on plague duty to a group of villages 12 or 14 miles from Jullundur. At one of these, a small A’illage of some 200 people, there had been many deaths from plague tAvo years before, and on the day of our visit there Avere more per- sons lAung sick or recoA^ering in their houses than I had seen anA'^- Avhere in so small a space except in the hospital at Bombay. After Ave had gone round the Aullage, a pala\'er AA*as held with about a dozen of the men and youths, Avho stood in a semicircle near the village Avell, the Avomen draAving the Avater all the Avhile. Their spokesman Avas a sturdy little Jat who kneAV his mind, spoke to the point, and liore himself Avith the aplomb of a man of affairs. They had been asked in advance to consider whether they Avoidd not submit to inocu- lation, and had decided so peremptorily in the negatiA^e that the matter was not so much as mentioned again. The onl}^ question discussed was eA^acuation. The spokesman pointed out A’^arious prac- tical difficulties in the Avay of a general camping out, to Avhich Cap-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22406967_0030.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
