26
of August. At Cocanada, in the Godavery District, it was epidemic in June.
The engineering stations in the Upper Godavery suffered very severely. Cholera
visited also the Vizagapatam District, and in the endemic area of Ganjam to
the north it was much more prevalent than usual. At the stations of Berham-
pore and Chicacole cholera prevailed from May to December.
Coimbatore.
Salem.
In the Coimbatore District the disease was brought to the Railway Station
in March, and in July it came up in force through the gap
in the Western ghauts, attacking the towns of Pollachy and
Coimbatore. The Salem District suffered both in the beginning and end of the
year. Travellers from the Western Coast brought up cholera
also in June. One of these I saw on the Shevaroy Hills,
near Salem, who had been seized with cholera a day after leaving Calicut. The
case proved fatal, but no cholera broke out on the hills in consequence of the
importation.
New invasion of Ma-
dras in August 1865,
also of all districts to
the south.
34. In its southward progress the invading cholera struck Madras in August,
and then pursued its course affecting South Arcot, Tanjore,
Trichinopoly, Madura, and Tinnevelly, so that, within the
year, the whole of the districts which had not been occupied
in 1864, were under the influence of cholera.
THE CHOLERA OF 1866.
Scarcity and famine
predisposing to great
cholera mortality.
35. So general a distribution of cholera in 1865 augured ill for the health
of the Presidency in the following year. There were general causes at work
too, predisposing the population to suffer unduly from epidemic disease. The
monsoons in 1864 and 1865 had generally failed; large tracts
of land remained uncultivated, and the prices of food had, in
many parts, gone up to famine rates. In every district there
was scarcity, and in Ganjam, Bellary, North Arcot, Salem, and Cuddapah,
the poorer people suffered from actual want of food. The south-west monsoon
rains of 1866, though late, were generally abundant, but prior to the advent of
the rainy season the heat and drought were intense all over South India, and the
general distress and impairment of vital power, from high prices and scarcity of
food, were most prevalent.
Decline of cholera in
Bombay Presidency,
southward movement
of the great body of
cholera.
36. With regard to the Bombay Presidency which had suffered so severely in
1864 and 1865, it is interesting to note the steady southern
advance of the epidemic, and the exemption in 1866 of the
tracts desolated in the former two years. As regards the
Bombay Army there was almost an entire immunity from
cholera in this year; the only reproduction occurring at Poonah and Kirkee in
August, when eight deaths occurred.
In the Bombay revenue districts there was almost complete extinction in
every place where the severity of the epidemic fell in 1865, but some of the
southern Collectorates had suffered but little in that year, and did not feel the
full force of the cholera wave until 1866. The following table illustrates this
most clearly:-