CHAP. IV.] Previous history of plague in India. 77
Mild bubonic
form.
was not much increased nor the pulse greatly accellerated; his bowels
were not disordered nor did his tongue indicate much febrile irritation.
He was able to walk about and converse, answering questions dis-
tinctly. No person would have thought him in danger, but there existed,
in the patient's mind, a degree of alarm and anxiety altogether dispro-
portionate to the apparent symptoms. He had only been attacked
that morning. All his consideration seemed absorbed with a pain in
his chest. He answered to my questions whether he had not other
pain, as in his head, his back or limbs, that these were slightly painful;
but he immediately recurred to his chest, dwelling upon that with a
look of most painful distress; and if not questioned about other symp-
toms, it seemed as if he would not have mentioned them. He had
besides a very slight cough,-so slight that it might easily have escaped
unnoticed,-and this was accompanied with a discharge of blood from
the mouth. The following day he was delirious, had a burning skin,
with a very quick pulse. I searched for but found no buboes. He
died in the course of the succeeding night, i.e., in less than forty-eight
hours from the first attack. The characteristic symptoms of this variety
are, slight cough, pain of the chest, and hmorrhage from the mouth,
attended with fever, but no buboes." Dr. Whyte also gives a descrip-
tion of the mild form of bubonic plague unaccompanied by fever.
" I saw,"* he states, "a great number who had buboes, without any
fever, and was told that upwards of one hundred and twenty had
suffered in this way. These people walked about without either
alarm or inconvenience, for none had died, and not many of the
buboes suppurated."
Dr. Whyte's
report.
Morvi.
Dr. Whyte's report is divided into two parts. In the first part
he gives a description of the matters that came under his obser-
vation in the different places he visited, and in the second part
he states his general conclusions. Morvi, in the Halal division, and
Wuccaner (Vankaner), Sura (Sara), Moolee (Muli), and Sily (Sayla)
in the Jhalawar division were the principal places visited. It was
three years since the outbreak at Morvi (1816) when Dr. Whyte
made his tour. He stated that the situation and surroundings of Morvi
were healthy and not such as predispose to ordinary malarial fevers,
but that the whole space within the walls of the town was crowded
with houses. The disease prevailed for five months in Morvi, begin-
ning in the cold and lasting through the hot months without undergoing
any modification on the occurrence of the change of weather. The ac-
counts given of the mortality varied greatly. Dr. Whyte considered five
hundred deaths to be a probable estimate. He with difficulty procured
* At Muli, in the Jhalawar division.