On the epidemiology of the plague / by E. H. Hankin.

  • Ernest Hanbury Hankin
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the epidemiology of the plague / by E. H. Hankin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/44 page 56
    routes, to Bombay, and returned thence by rail to Nassik. The statement that Garhwali fakirs only visit the Bombay Presidency on the occasion of the Nassik festivals is obviously of importance in this connection. Characters of Bombay plague. The plague in the Bombay Presidency differs from plague at present existing outside India in other important respects besides in its greater persistency and intensity. Firstly, it has shown its maximum virulence not in towns but in villages’. Secondly, though it spreads with facility from a town or village to a neighbouring village, it does not appear often to be carried to great distances in epidemic form. Further, in India, it shows no tendency to spread along trade routes as such. With regard to the greater virulence of Indian plague in small towns and villages than in large towns, the cases of Bombay and Oporto may be cited and compared. In both cases there was panic among the inhabitants on the appearance of the disease, and in both cases the infection was carried into towns and villages in the neighbourhood. In the case of Bombay the outbreaks thus produced often exceeded greatly in virulence the original outbreak in that city. In the case of Oporto though isolated cases of plague occurred in many villages in the neighbourhood, in no case did the disease succeed in establishing itself in epidemic form outside the town. Similarly in Tamatave, the disease spread to the surrounding country, but appears to have died out there before it came to an end in the town itself. Generally it may be stated, that, so far as existing evidence goes, plague, in the present outbreak, outside India has attached itself especially to the crowded and insanitary portions of large towns. Similar characters possessed by other Indian plagues. Can we find among other outbreaks an analogy for the peculiar characters of the present Indian plague ? 1 The intensity of plague in towns and villages in the Bombay Presidency has been in inverse proportion to their size as exemplified by the following table, which relates to certain plague outbreaks occurring between 1897 and 1898 in that Presidency :— Death rate from Number of plague per 1000 Name of place inhabitants inhabitants Bombay 806,144 20-1 Poona 161,696 31:2 Karachi 97,009 24-1 Sholapur 61,564 35°0 Kale 4,431 104°9 Supne 2,068 102°5 Ibrampur 1,692 360°5 The death rate of Bombay for 1896-97 is derived from lower plague death rates from the crowded and less sanitary central portions of the city, and higher plague death rates from suburban districts where village conditions prevailed.
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