(87)
The general mortuary returns of the province, being considered unreliable,
have not been published with the annual sanitary report. In their stead
appear the statistics of the above selected areas, which are considered
approximately correct, and therefore worthy of permanent record.
The monthly cholera mortality registered in the selected areas during
1874 is shown in the annexed tabular statement.
The total of deaths registered in the selected areas is 6,345, or at the rate
of 2.36 per mille of population.
Of the above deaths 3,418 or 2.67 per mille of population were returned
from the urban, and 2,927 or 2.08 per mille, from the rural areas. Exclusive
of these deaths in the selected areas, a total of 50,531, or 0.88 per mille, deaths
from cholera were registered during the year in the remaining areas of the
province. Of these 50,531 deaths 902 or 1.30 per mile were registered in
the town, and 49,629 or 0.87 per mille in the rural circles of the general area.
The total deaths registered from cholera during 1874 amounted to 56,876, or
0.94 per mille of population. The returns show " that the prevalence and
fatality of cholera in 1874 were somewhat less severe than in the preceding
year, and that the rural areas suffered in 1874 to a greater extent than the
urban areas in both the selected tracts, and the general registering circles,
but that in 1873 the reverse was the case in the selected tracts. * * *
The cholera of the year under review was less severe, less wide-spread, and
less extensively epidemic than that of the preceding year. It was present,
however, in every district. The monthly prevalence and fatality of the
disease varied greatly in different parts of the province. The peculiarities
are illustrated by a series of diagram, which as Dr. J. M. Coates, Sani-
tary Commissioner for Bengal, observes in Section III of his report for
1874, "show in a clearer manner than any array of figures the monthly
prevalence and fatality of the disease, as it existed in the different circles or
Commissionerships into which Bengal is divided, and in the urban and rural
circles of the province." These diagrams are here reproduced as the most
eloquent expositors of the recorded deportment of cholera in Bengal in 1874.
Cholera in the Western Circle (Burdwan Dvision).
Total mortality 1.62 per 1,000 of population.