(193)

SECTION IX.

CONCLUSION AS TO THE NATURE OF THE EPIDEMIC
AND THE METHOD OF INFECTION.

     We have seen that the epidemic which goes by the name
of kála-ázar in Assam is from first to last a very intense form
of malarial fever. We have seen that the whole course and
distribution of the disease has been that of a wave of increased
mortality from fever, which has slowly, but surely, spread up the
Assam Valley in the lines of communication, and that conclu-
sive evidence has been given to prove that the fever is spread
by being actually communicated directly or indirectly from
one person to another: in a word, that it is infectious. We have
seen that there was a definite cause for the intensification of
the ordinary malarial fever in Rungpore in the early seventies,
and that, as a matter of fact, the Assam epidemic did take its
origin from the spread of this intensified Rungpore fever across
the Brahmaputra by the two main lines of communication bet-
ween that district and the foot of the Garo Hills, where it first
attracted attention under the name of kála-ázar, or black
sickness. We have also seen that the epidemic of malarial
fever which devastated parts of Lower Bengal in the sixties
and early seventies, was of a precisely parallel nature to the
Assam epidemic, although it was of a different type and had a
different origin, and doubtless other historical epidemics of
malarial fever for centuries back were of the same nature,
although this is the first time that such a phenomena has been
examined in the light of modern pathological and bacteriologi-
cal knowledge, for the latter was still in its infancy at the time
of even the Bardwan epidemic, and the malaria germ was then
undiscovered. The question remains whether the facts ad-
duced in this report, when viewed in the light of our present
knowledge, will allow of an intelligible and comprehensive solu-
tion of the problem presented by the disease, such as will

2 C