Reports bringing up the statistical history of the European Army in India and of the Native Army and jail population of Bengal to 1876 : and the cholera history of 1875 and 1876, in continuation of reports embracing the period from 1817 to 1872 / by J.L.Bryden.
- James Bryden
- Date:
- 1878
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Reports bringing up the statistical history of the European Army in India and of the Native Army and jail population of Bengal to 1876 : and the cholera history of 1875 and 1876, in continuation of reports embracing the period from 1817 to 1872 / by J.L.Bryden. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![Chapter I- ] the dying out of cholera. OVEE HINDOSTAN in 1873 and 1874. recorded in the six months. But in the latter six months 5,000 people were carried off in these two districts. This cholera was almost entirely localised. Azimgurh, lying next to Goruckpore, was slightly affected, losing 250; and the Fyzabad district o£ Oudh, bounding the cholera tract on the west, had 16 deaths in November and December, which I should attribute to a new epidemic distribution of cholera late in 1874. Leaving out these 16 deaths, the province of Oudh had 3 deaths only during the time that the adjoining districts were affected; and Jaunpore immediately to the south had only 2 deaths amongst its population. In the districts lying between Oudh and the Central Provinces, 52 deaths only appear in the registers of 1874 :— ''to* Allahabad . . . .15 Cawnpore . . . .23 Futtehpore .... 4 Banda .... 7 Humeerpore . . . .1 Jaloun . , . . .2 Jhansi . . . . .0 Lullutpore . . . .0 In the Central Provinces the history is the same; 2 deaths appear in the register, as occurring at Nursingpore in June and July. In the registration of the Berars 2 deaths also appear, which the Sanitary Commissioner did not authenticate after personal enquiry. Taking for granted that the deaths of the Bombay Presidency of the first six months of Bomba Presidenc 1873 represent the natural termination of the cholera of 1872, we find a total of 29 deaths remaining, representing the cholera mortality of the last six months of 1873, in the whole Bombay Presidency, of which 20 were registered in Bombay city. Thirty-seven deaths from cholera are said to have occurred in the Bombay Presidency in 1874. Miuli-as Presidency. Why the The Sanitary Commissioner for Madras emphatically repeats cholera of 1872 did not extend. the same history of exemption in his report for 1873. The Bengal cholera, invading in 1872, occupied a certain area only of the Madras Presi- General features of the cholera of dency. It did not overpass the same_ limit in 1873. What 1872, ou the southern epidemic cholera did occur ill the Madras Presidency was but a locally *i'<^*- manifested cholera carried on from 1872. Of a total of 840 cholera deaths registered throughout the Presidency, 497 occurred in the one district of Nellore, and 178 in the districts to the north ; leaving, for the whole of the Presidency besides, 165 deaths. It would be useless,'^ he says, to enter into any speculations as to the causes of the arrest of a great epidemic wave. After considering the fact in many aspects, I must confess myself utterly ignorant as to the why and the wherefore of this abortive epidemic movement.^^ This much we may infer, that if any portion of the epidemic cholera of 1872 of the Central Provinces did reach the Madras Presidency it was but a very trifling offshoot of thi great body of cholera which found its true exit in Northern India and towards the Caspian, as shown in my report on the cholera of the year. The phenomenon recalls the epidemic distribution of 1867, when cholera extended from Orissa to Caubul, confined to the northern highway and with a clearly defined southern edge throughout its entire course, which the cholera of the year found it impossible to overleap. It is not behind a limit so shaded off that cholera falls and awaits revitalisation. On the southern epidemic highway, the cholera of the Central Provinces of 1872, was as nothing when compared with the epidemics of 1860, 1864-65 and 1868-69. In the earliest of these e23idemics the jjopulation was decimated j and in 1869, 56,000 per- sons succumbed to the epidemic. In the epidemic of 1872, which was as truly an invading cholera as that of the former years, we have to show but 1,592 deaths for the same area. It seems to me that the Madras Presidency was but little affected through the route o£ the Central Provinces in 1872. Had invasion occurred, the fades of the death-table for the Presidency would have been different. As it stands, it is divided natin-ally into two divisions— the cholera of the north coming down to a definite geographical limit, and the cholera of the south decaying from January and dead in June. Had invasion occurred, a sudden rise over a wide area in July and August would have been apparent, as a third and distinctive feature in the table. And this we do not find. Looking at the geographical distribution of the epidemic over the area of the Central Provinces, out of the total of 1,592 deaths 1,294 occurred in the Nerbudda districts, and these were associated with the cholera of the Berars, an area suddenly invaded in July 1872, and which gave 1,578 deaths. There can be little doubt that the cholera of Hyderabad, which com- menced simultaneously with this cholera of the Berars, was truly associated with it; and this cholera and that of Kurnool in Sej^tembei, October and November, was perhaps all that was due to one common influence affecting in 1872 these tracts of the Madras Presidency and the Central Provinces, the Berars, and the districts reached by cholera in the Bombay Pre- sidency. All districts north and west of Hyderabad suffered from epidemic cholera in 1872. The districts to the south, and south-west, excepting Kurnool did not suffer and had no cholera after June 1872, and the inference is, that what they had in the spring of 1872 belonged to the cholera of a previous epidemic. The east coast districts as far south as Nellore gave, in 1872, a total of 10,174 deaths. This cholera is geograi^hically connected with the cholera of Bengal Proper, and not with that of Central India. It followed the course which a cholera invading northwards into the Gan- getic tract pursues; it commenced in spring, it culminated in July and August, and died out in October and November. Grouping this as a distinct body of cholera, which I should be](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24749333_0299.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
