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The Cholera of 1871 in the Bengal Province prevailed in every one of
its 728 registering circles. The following particulars are gathered from the
reports of Civil Surgeons:-
In Monghyr there were occasional cases in the town and suburbs from
the end of May to the close of the year; they were never numerous, did not
occur in anything like epidemic sequence, intervals of a week or ten days
often elasping without a report. " On the 4th June," writes Dr. T. Mathew,
"an elderly convict was seized with cholera. Within the walls of a jail, if
anywhere, a Civil Surgeon has every facility for investigating the history of
a first case; but in this case I could not make even a satisfactory conjecture as
to its source; the prisoner had not been outside the jail for months, had no
intercourse with people from outside, and was living under exactly the same
conditions as to food, water, employment, &c., as the rest of the prison
population. How the cholera found its way to him alone (for there was no
other case in the jail) is a mystery." Dr. Mathew states that " in none of
the outbreaks reported in the town or suburbs did the disease show any tend-
ency to spread," and adds, "this is the history of cholera in non-epidemic
seasons, in places such as Monghyr, situated within the endemic limits of the
disease; cases occur every year, but if under conditions opposed to its propa-
gation, the seizures are few and the attack dies out; let the conditions, however,
(and I cannot venture to guess what they are) be favourable to the spread and
growth of the poison, the disease assumes an endemic character."
In Parnia cholera appeared in the south-east of the district in October
in localities where the Ganges had overflowed, and was limited to the area
of inundation. The Civil Surgeon, Dr. Picachy, attributes the outbreak to
a damp condition of the soil and air, to the destitution, insufficient clothing,
and exposure to wet and cold of those affected, together with their use of
bad, and especially of uncooked vegetable food.
In Patna cholera appeared in the town in August, and also in its
neighbourhood, and continued during the three succeeding months. Early
in November several suspicious cases of diarrhoea attended with vomiting
occurred in the jail. On the 9th and three following days fifteen cholera
cases were admitted, of which four died. Two hundred prisoners were at
once removed to Digah, where three hours after their arrival three of them
were simultaneously attacked, and one man died. Dr. Simpson connects
this outbreak with the damp state of the jail wards; the walls were damp
to the height of four feet; the flooring was in such a state that in walking
over it an impression of the foot was left, and a walking stick could be
easily pushed in up to its middle; it was just as this state of things was at
its height that cholera broke out. Curiously enough when the floods were
at their highest level, reaching in fact to the jail-walls, the wards were quite
dry: this excessive damp only made its appearance after the cessation of the
rains in October, and at a time when the level of the sub-soil water, as
indicated by the wells, had considerably sunk. Hay provided for the prisoners
to sleep on, needed drying before it could be used a second time. Isolated
cases of cholera were reported from the district throughout the year.
In Gya cholera appeared early in June in several places to the west,
north-west, and north of the town, and raged epidemically till the middle
of July. At Kumani, 45 miles north-west of Gya, the disease raged for a
short period, carrying off 15 men, 10 women, and 5 children in the space
of a few days. The Civil Surgeon, Dr. Russel, writes:-It " appeared to me to
be a very singular circumstance why this village was singled out by the
disease, pounced upon as it were, while all the other villages in the immediate
neighbourhood remained intact. The village in question was not in any
degree more crowded than the other surrounding villages, and there were no
cesspool, foul drainage, or the like to account for the predeliction."
In Shahabad cholera was rife in Sasseram sub-division during May and
June ; the majority of the few cases reported in the town of Arrah turned out
on inspection to be ordinary bowel-complaints, due to errors in diet. Dr.
Thornton remarks that intestinal worms appeared in some instances to have
been the exciting cause of attacks resembling cholera. In October and
November also cholera was reported from Buxar and its neighbourhood;
but both from inquiry and personal observation, Dr. Thornton was induced