Resemblances between Assam and "Bardwan Fever".

191

     Once more—

     "I have noticed that when deaths from this cause (the epidemic
fever) occur during the year of invasion, there are deaths in the
same houses in the following year in more than half the number of
cases noted."

     To turn from the specific to the general, he sums up as
follows:

     "During the eight years succeeding the introduction of the fever
into Culna, the disease spread steadily westward so long as the roads
and traffic lines were westerly. When these began to run north and
south, the disease took the same course, and its whole history exhibits
a remarkable and persistent association with the lines of communica-
tion. There has never been any such connection between the direc-
tion of its propagation and that of the lines of drainage. Two areas
have escaped the disease, of which the distinguishing features are as
follows:—One is low, moist, fertile, contains the average district
population per square mile, is purely agricultural, belongs to the
district of Moorshedabad, and has no road connecting it with the
fever tracts of Bardwan or Beerbhoom, and no traffic with those
districts. The other is somewhat higher and drier than the average,
is unfertile and sparsely populated (492 per square mile) as com-
pared with the average of the district, which is 578 per square mile,
and has no road crossing it, save a mere track. North and south of
the area, where there are roads and traffic, there has been fever also.
West of the former area, along the read line, there is fever also. In
the areas themselves, which resemble each other closely in no parti-
cular save their isolation from infected portions of Bardwan, there has
been no fever whatever. The exemption of these areas under the
conditions mentioned, is corroborative of the conclusion that the
disease spreads by importation and communication from and between
attacked and healthy villages. The fever then is a travelling fever.
It appears, spreads, prevails for a certain time, and disappears."

     He sums up his opinion as to the nature of the fever
thus:

     "I believe that a fever originally malarious, acquired either
Jessore or Nuddea contagious properties; that in virtue of this
contagion, it travelled westward into Western Nuddea."

     And he traces it from here to Bardwan, and continues—

     "From his time its history is that of a travelling contagious