Nature of kála-ázar.

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Nowgong in the years before either of them were attacked
by kála-ázar. Now I have adduced evidence in Section III
to show that anchylostomiasis is so rare among the inhabit-
ants of the Nowgong district, apart from the coolies working
on the tea gardens and railway, that I have not been able
to find a single case which would stand the test of the blood
examination, and the administration of thymol and counting
the worms passed, so that it may at least be said that this
parasite is certainly not more common in the Nowgong
district, if it is as common as it is in Tezpur, Sibsagar,
and Dibrugarh, while the fever prevalence differs very slightly,
apart from kála-ázar in the two cases. Yet we have Now-
gong literally decimated by the disease, while the medical
practitioners of Upper Assam (Sibsagar and Dibrugarh),
some of whom had been over twenty years in the country,
unanimously testify, after being shown cases of kála-ázar,
that "the disease appears to be entirely unknown in Upper
Assam above Nowgong, and differs in every particular from
anchylostomiasis," while Tezpur (excluding the Mangaldai
subdivision) was until quite recently free from the epidemic,
although I know from personal observation that there is plenty
of anchylostomiasis on some of the gardens there, and it used to
be more malarious than Nowgong. Thus we find that one district
in which anchylostomiasis is very rare among the indigenous
inhabitants, who, be it remarked, suffer most severely from kála-
ázar, and in which, previous to the advent of the epidemic,
suffered little, if at all more, from malarious fevers than those
of Upper Assam, is more than decimated by the disease,
while the latter in which both these diseases are present in
much the same, if not in greater, degree than they are in
Nowgong, have so far entirely escaped it.

    The same thing is true of individual places in the affected
area. For example, a certain out-garden in the Nowgong
district is in daily communication with the head garden, dis-
tanced five miles, and both have suffered from kála-ázar
for several years past. Yet another independent garden, only

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