Plague in India / by Charles Creighton.

  • Charles Creighton
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

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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    disinclined to look into the errors of omissions of sanitation which had jirepared the way for plague, especially in Bombay city. However, the Avitnesses contrived to sa}'^ a good many things, proprio motn, Avhich make the three volumes of evidence valuable and inter- esting reading. PKESENT AREA. When the commission began its work in NoA^ember, 1898, the cen- ters of infection Avere many and Avidely scattered, .so that sittings to take evidence Avere held at places as far apart as Bangalore and Lahore in one direction, Calcutta and Karachi in the other. But the infected area Avas still comparatively small. There Avas no plague in the Madras Presidency, none in Bengal exceiiting at Calcutta, none in the United Provinces excepting over a small part of the district of Saharanpur, and none in the Punjab excepting in one small spot of the Jullundur doab. During the next six years the area has been extended enormously, but still Avithin notable limits. The Madras Presidency has continued almost entirely free, and, Avhat is more remarkable, also the Avhole of Orissa, LoAver Bengal, and Assam. It is the nortliAvestern plains that haA^e become the chosen seat of ])lague, from the Jhelum River in the north to a point on the Ganges about 300 miles above Calcutta, Avhile the original area in the Bom- bay Presidency has extended. Those regions of India Avhich liaA^e been proA^ed by an experience of nine years to be the great seats of plague are shaded on the map. (Fig. 1.) They look someAvhat compact and continuous in tAvo diAu- sions—one the plains of the nortliAvest, the other the alluvial valleys of the Deccan and Gujarat. This does not profess to be an exhaustiA^e map of plague. For example, there have been many deaths from first to last in the natiAH^ States of Mysore, Hyderabad, Indore, and Rajpu- tana, and in the British Central Provinces, but far more in the cities, such as Bangalore, Indore, and Jubbulpore, than in tile villages. Also in Sind, Karachi Avas not the only place infected at first, although it remains almost the only place noAv. If I had shaded eA'eiw one of those extensiA’e and sparsely iiopulated tracts of country AA’here jilague has eA^r been in tliose years, I should have produced a confusing, if not a misleading effect. Without being 'exhaustiA'^e, the blue coloring in the map on the Avail shoAvs fairly enough Avhere the interest really lies, and it covers tho.se parts of the Bombay Presidency and of the nortliAvest to Avhich I limited myself during a recent tour of three months, Avhich was undertaken at the instance of the Leigh BroAv'ne trust.