Review of the progress of sanitation in India.

  • Moore, William James, 1828-1896.
Date:
[1869]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Review of the progress of sanitation in India. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    a Commission * appointed for that purpose at Dellii, his system of conservancy was unanimously approved, and would probably have been adopted throughout India, as it had been some time before carried out in the Panjab jails, had not Moule’s system been shortly afterwards proposed. At the close of 1863 a Sanitary Commissioner, or rather Health Officer, was appointed for Calcutta, and in 1864 Bombay was similarly supplied. The year 1863 was further marked by the appearance of the “ Report of the Royal Sanitary Commissioners appointed to enquire into the sanitary state of the Army in India.” This Commission, first appointed in 1858 under the presidency of the late Lord Herbert,f pursued its investigation by the examination of a large number of Indian officials of all classes, by inspecting the old records of mortality from the commencement of the century, and by obtaining an accurate account of the various military stations of British India, with all sanitary defects as then existing. The two large volumes, the result of this investigation, are monuments of labour and research, and may well be designated the Magna Gharta of sanitary reform in India ; from which sprung most of the measures of which we are now, or our successors will be, reaping the benefit. And it is only just to add, that to Sir Ranald Martin, K.O.B., belongs the credit of persistent efforts to obtain such a Commission, and of many of the sanitary measures proposed by the Commission. The small amount of attention formerly vouchsafed to Indian matters, was well exemplified in what followed the pub- lication of this report. The announcement that since the commencement up to the termination of the first half of the present century, the rate of mortality among Europeans in India had averaged 69 per 1,000 annually, was received with astonish- ment and indignation. Sir Charles Wood, then Secretary of State for India, stated in the House of Commons on July 14th, 1863, that “the Report of the Commission had brought to “ light a rate of mortality which, before its publication, no one President—Colonel Paterson. Members—Surgeon Fowler. „ C. Campbell, Esq., c.E, The Eepoi’t of the Commission is signed by Stanley, President. Menibors: Proby T. Cautly. J. R. Martin. John Sutherland. J. B. Gibson. E. H. Greathead. W. Farr.