The Lower Bengal (Burdwan) epidemic fever reviewed and compared with the present Assam epidemic malarial fever (kala-azar) / by Leonard Rogers.

  • Rogers, Leonard, 1868-1962.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Lower Bengal (Burdwan) epidemic fever reviewed and compared with the present Assam epidemic malarial fever (kala-azar) / by Leonard Rogers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    408 in which the pjerms of disease have been arti- ficialiy intensified, let us take the case of pneu¬ monia, which ordinarily is not an infectious disease, yet every now and then it becomes so, and attacks whole families, or large numbers of a regiment, as occasionally happens on the North-West Frontier of India, where instances have occurred of sick attendants over other cases being struck down by the disease, which has in sometimes only been eradicated when the troops were placed under canvas. The relation spreading up the Brahmaputra valley, or that a : of Pestis minor to true plague appeals to be rapid silting up of the main river of such a I a similar instance. ... . . district as Jessore might originate a similar j In the same way 1 maintain that in the case epidemic ? Such epidemics have doubtless occa- ' of travelling epidemics of malarial lever, the sionally occurred for centuries past. The difli- germs of the disease have become intensified, culty of proving by direct evidence the intro- as it were in Nature s laboratory, by conditions duction and spread of an intensified and infec- , unusually favourable to their vitality, until tious form of malarial fever into a notoriously ! they attain to the power of being communicated same districts in accordance with seasonal causes, usually excess or deficiency of the rainfall, is well- known. If two unhealthy j ears succeed each other something approaching to local epidemic of malarial fever may occur. Is it then surprising 1 that three or more successive unseasonal years, ' such as could only very seldom occur may pro- i duce a spreading epidemic, or that the succession I of five out of six years of greatly deficient rain- | fall in the early seventies should have started the I Rangpur-Assam epidemic which is still actively malarious district by human intercouise is necessarily well nigh insuperable, but that a malarial fever may be introduced into an island previously free from it by means of human intercourse and may there spreaii in the form of an epidemic is proved by the case of Mauritius and Reu^^Dii. Up to 1865 malarial fever was unknown in these islands, and is still unknown from one person to another either directly through the air, or indirectly after passage through the soil. I shall not attempt to give here my views as to the exact W’ay in which the infection takes place, as 1 hope to do so in another place, and this paper has already exceeded the limits i had intended. The hope of being able to throw any light in the neighbouring island of Rodrigues. At | on the vastly important subject of the Lower the date mentioned it was introduced by coolies from India, and such a fearful epidemic ensued, that one-third of the inhabitants of the islands are said to have died in the course of four years, while in 1867 alone there were 31,920 deaths i out of a population in the area affected not; exceeding 130,000. Moreover, the disease re¬ mains thoi’e to the present day but in a, milder form. It;is worthy of note that this epidemic took place at the very time that the “ conta¬ gious malarial fever” was raging in Burdwan, and although I have not yet been able to ascer¬ tain whether any of the Indian coolies, who are said to have carried the disease to Mauritius, Bengal malarial fev er epidemic must be my ex¬ cuse' for raking up such a much discussed, but now partly forgotten, subject. Dr. ROGERS’ REPORT ON KALA-AZ.4r. The following is an abstract of remarks by Surgeon-Colonel A. Stephen, M.B., Principal Medical Officer and Sanitary Commissioner, Assam, in a letter forwarding the above report to the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Assam :— Leaving Calcutta on the 16th of April 1896, Dr. Rogers visited Dhubri, Gauhati, Shillong and actually came from the infected areas in Bengal, ^ Tezpur, in order to learn the views of the Civil yet I venture to suggest that this was very | Suro^eons of those places on the disease which likely the origin of the Mauritius outbreak. This proposition is to some extent supported by the following opinion recorded by Dr. French when writing in 1871 of the Burdwan epidemic, “ it appears to me to be identical with the epidemic fever of the Mauritius of 1866-67.” It must be carefully noted that I do not say that all malarial fevers are infectious, but only that, under extraordinary circumstances, malarial fevers maj’’ be intensified until they become so, and may then be spread by human intercourse to places situated on a suitable soil. This explains all the facts of both the Lower Bengal and Rangpur-Assam outbreaks. Unfortunately it is incapable of scientific demonstration as long as we are unable even to cultivate the malarial organism, but it derives much support from recent bacteriological work on other germ he was about to investigate, and in due course arrived at Nowgong, the capital of the district in which the disease was at that time most prevalent, and which he was requested to con¬ sider as for the time being, his head-quarters. He spent the next five months in the Nowgong District in investigating the disease. During these months he studied the cases of the disease which he met in the Nowgong dispensary and jail, and in a large number of infected places in that district, including a considerable number of tea-gardens. In October he proceeded to Shillong in order to study the minute pathology of the organs of persons who had died of kalti~ dzdr in the Nowgong District, and on whom he had peHorraed post-'niortein examinations. He afterwards visited Sylhet to study cases of ordi- nar}’ chronic malarial lever there, and to diseases. Leaving on one side all the instances notice the difiereuces, if any, between them