Volume 2
Report on small-pox in Calcutta, 1833-34--1837-38--1843-44 : and vaccination in Bengal, from 1827 to 1844 / by Duncan Stewart.
- Stewart, Duncan, 1804-1875
- Date:
- 1844
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report on small-pox in Calcutta, 1833-34--1837-38--1843-44 : and vaccination in Bengal, from 1827 to 1844 / by Duncan Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.
37/312 page 19
![ta] A peculiarity in consequence exists in the character of this population, which though startling is easily accounted for; it is stationary in amount, with a great excess of adults; a very careful census was made by Captain Birch in 1837, which assigned the entire population of all creeds, castes, and countries at 2,29,714 souls. By means of the same agents and with the same care and supervision he made another census in 1843, when it was found that the Native population was rather Jess than in 1837. The European community on the contrary is rapidly on the increase both in wealth and number ; substantial puckah houses in certain quarters have began to replace the frail and filthy tenements lately occupied by low caste Hindoos, while the Native part of the City of Palaces, though containing not a single house older than the days of Clive, exhibits all the attributes of age and decay as much as any of the oldest cities of India, retaining all the original imper- fections of narrow and crowded streets, impure drains and sewers, small and ill ventilated houses and filthy cess pools, tanks and privies. Could Mr. J. R. Martin have paid us a visit in April of this year he would have found the truth of his predictions fully and painfully corroborated when he wrote thus. ‘In the event of a contagious disease (and there is ‘no reason why such should not occur here) the ‘dense state of the Burra Bazar and surrounding “parts, the want of water courses and means of “ facility for removing accumulations of filth, &c. ‘‘ will stand as insuperable bars to the best devised ‘¢ reoulations of Medical Police. oo Topographical “ Meraoir,” sp..19.)](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33097288_0002_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
