Cholera and water : an address delivered at the annual meeting of the South Indian Branch, British Medical Association, 8th January, 1886 / by M.C. Furnell.

  • Furnell, Michael Cudmore, 1829-1888.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cholera and water : an address delivered at the annual meeting of the South Indian Branch, British Medical Association, 8th January, 1886 / by M.C. Furnell. 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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    I knoAv of no other causes at work than those I have enumerated to which this freedom can be ascribed. In pre-municipal days the town was in a highly insanitary con- dition, when there was everything to favor the development and spread oE cholera, once it was introduced by the methods mentioned in the reports of medical officers already copied. Since those wholesome laws and regulations have been brought into operation, the condition of the town has been in a sanitary point oE view considerably improved, and all disease-generating causes have been removed and are being removed as detected with- out being allowed to remain and become the centres from which diseases of an epidemic nature may develope and spread. All my endeavours as Sanitary officer have been, and shall be directed to maintain this town in as good a sanitary state as I can by removing all those conditions which led to insanitation and favor the development of epidemics; and thus far under Grod's bless- ing the health of this town has been, I am pleased to report, re- markably good. But as we all know the moment an energetic conservative officer of the stamp of Doctor Tyrrell withdraws his hand things soon fall back into their primitive state. I will not say the general conservancy of Guntur is as bad as vv'hen Dr. Bigg Wither first took it in hand, but I will say Guntur is no cleaner generally than many towns in India, indeed not so clean as many I could mention in our Presidency, so its immunity from cholera can scarcely be owing to general sanitary arrangements. But it has an admirable arranged water supply, an arrangement which I should like to see carried out in every town where it is possible; some little distance out of the town is a fine large tank, almost a small lake, and from this, the water, having first been allowed to run through a large roughly constructed but effective filter, is passed by pipes into the town, and distributed to the in- habitants at various stands. The tank itself is zealously conserved; its banks are patrolled by peons who rigorously defend it from being'polluted by dhobies or people washing themselves therein. To this I consider Guntur owes its immunity from cholera since the time of Dr. Tyrrell, but I should not be astonished at any time to hear of a sudden outbreak of cholera in Guntur ; let the strict watch over the tank be relaxed, let a party of pilgrims encamp on the banks, and use it as pilgrims with cholera amongst