Spirillum fever : synonyms famine or relapsing fever, as seen in western India / by H. Vandyke Carter.

Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Spirillum fever : synonyms famine or relapsing fever, as seen in western India / by H. Vandyke Carter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Bombay city is a remarkable illustration : there may have occurred others like it. In the nearer native states, however, towards both east and west, equal dearth and sickness prevailed, from the same climatic causes, during 1877. Thus, in Mysore, the total reported mortality of 1876 being 54,265, during the first five months only of the following year it amounted to 85,915—an enormous augmentation, due chiefly to so-called 'cholera,' the fever mortality (deaths 12,871) then also rising. Further data were not accessible, nor have I yet learned any particulars respecting the state of the conterminous Nizam's territory. Westward, the Kattiawar peninsula of Gujerat was nearly equally afflicted with drought and fever ; and thence was a nearly continuous stream of immigration to Bombay. With regard to certain districts of the Madras Presidency, not far separated from the worst affected in the Deccan, and like them suffering severely from deficiency of N.E. monsoon rains in the autumn of 1876 ; it is recorded by the Sanitary Commissioner that whilst the mortality from famine-diarrhcea was very great in the early part of 1877, yet at this time {i.e. when the fever mortality was so high in Bombay districts and city) no cases were anywhere seen resembling famine-fever, and that the famine people in Madras did not show symptoms of fever of any kind. Whence it seems that within an area, wide but continuous and uniformly afflicted, on the one side of a conventional mid-line (viz. the western) a fatal form of fever was very rife, whilst upon the other side {i.e. the eastern) such disease was absent. Here a positive datum being confronted by a negative one, the position amounts to discrepancy rather than contradiction. It is yet very perplexing, however viewed ; and, assuming the general accuracy of official statistics, I cannot conceive any reconciling term as regards the western area, except the supposition that famine-fever had been first introduced into the Deccan from Bom- bay, and did not spread beyond Presidency limits. Such an idea is inconsistent with recorded dates and places of fever mortality, yet I would not reject it were there any valid evidence in its favour. In detail, evidence is furnished by the Reports of the Sanitary Com- missioner of Madras that the fever mortality of the most affected districts did not subside during 1876, and it was there doubled in 1877. During 1878 it was still undoubtedly high. From the Report of 1879 it seemed still in excess of the average previous to the famine, the statistics given showing that since 1866 the fever mortality in those districts, and in them alone, had augmented as much as in the Bombay famine area. It is understood that the fever was still of malarious origin : yet as regards one district, that of Chingleput, it is noticed ' that there is great ten- dency when the periodic attacks have once been established, for them to recur at intervals of a week or fourteen days j the fever seemed to be contagious.' Such a statement appears to me suggestive of other than miasmatic fever, and were particulars admissible in official Reports, further information would have been of interest. Appreciation of Events in the Mofussil.—Owing to the absence of definite information in accessible records, one has to rely chiefly upon data collected in Bombay, and partly upon rational inference and analogy.
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