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THE PLAGUE IN BOMBAY FROM A FRENCH POINT OF VIEW.
THE PLAGUE IN BOMBAY FROM A FRENCH POINT OF VIEW.
995
peninsula. Old writers asserted that the occurred south of a certain latitude, and as paper and find a most appreciative article on Sir J. Criohton- a matter of fact it has never crossed the equator ; but Browne’s introductory lecture, eulogising especially the great atmospheric heat cannot, as was alleged, be the - cheerfulness of the medical profession. The praise is just. sole cause of the exemption, because at the very time the Dr. Johnson said of Dr. Mead that he lived more epidemic was most severe in Northern India the temperature in the broad sunshine of life than any man he ever there was quite as high as it was in the south, which knew; and the same holds of all true disciples of" remained immune. Dr. Yersin’s method of treatment is the Asoulapius. They bring hope and relief. They "obviate" only one of which Dr. Bonneau speaks approvingly. It is as Cullen said " the tendency to death." They eliminate true that his results in Bombay were not so favourable as disease on a large scale altogether from the employments and they had been in Hong-Kong, but this was owing to the ,homes of men, and where they do not altogether succeed manner in which the serum was prepared. In China it was they fight it bravely when it comes. That they are obtained after the intravenous injection of living cultures, successful in a large degree is shown by their very cheer- whereas in India the latter were dead and were injected subYersin’s serum is likewise, he considers, fulness. If success were not their ordinary experience they cutaneously. valuable as a miserable. And be of all men most as would prophylactic, but Dr. Bonneau was not at all notoriously, the preventive quality of M. Haffkine’s with and as our J. Crichton Browne Sir contemporary impressed says, which he characterises as not only crude but him is the with the case. lymph, says, contrary agreeing Haffkine’s M. method, moreover, does not in his dangerous. the merit of novelty, having already been opinion possess THE PLAGUE IN BOMBAY FROM A FRENCH Ferran in Spain and Pfeffer in Germany. essayed by POINT OF VIEW. ,individual cases skilfully back to health. We are the assured of this when we turn over a few pages of the
more
all
same
plague
DR. BONNEAU, medical officer of the first class in the French Colonial Service, who was deputed by the Governor of the French Possessions in India to make a study of the outbreak of plague at Bombay, has embodied the fruits of ’his mission in a lucid and instructive article which appears in the Archives de Médeeine Navale et Coloniale for September. With regard to the genesis of the epidemic this writer comes to no positive conclusion. " It is certain," he says, ’’ that the first cases occurred in a densely populated native quarter where the merchandise of the entire world is heaped up in the greatest profusion, awaiting distribution either by means of exportation or else internally to meet the industrial and commercial requirements of the country itself. The produce of China is there stored side by side with the cereals from Northern India. Was the disease imported from Hong-Kong, or did it travel with the wheat from the sub-Himalayan districts1 This is Cera question that will probably remain unanswered." tain observers have found an argument in favour of the Himalayan origin of the pestilence in the enormous mortality :that took place among the rats infesting the go-downs where the wheat was lying, but Dr. Bonneau very effectively disposes of this theory by remarking that if more rats died there than elsewhere it was simply because they existed in greater number. The plague at first advanced slowly and insidiously, taking a long time to, as it were, put forth its roots, .and Dr. Bonneau is quite satisfied that if energetic repressive measures had been adopted soon enough it could easily have been stamped out. Unfortunately, nothing at all was done by the municipal authorities until it was too late to sum,marily extinguish the innumerable foci of infection which had had time to establish themselves over the entire city. Mandevi, the quarter first contaminated, " consists of an agglomeration of unclean houses that are overflowing with dlthy inhabitants. Not one single rule of hygiene is observed in this slum, where man and beast live together pell-mell amidst semi-darkness and respiring a heavy vitiated atmosphere. The sewers are not in working order, and on either side of the street close to the houses there are open drains about two feet in depth which, owing to defective flushing, are lined with an evil smelling deposit made up of vegetable and animal detritus."" And yet, in spite of this shocking condition of things, the pestilence did not rage more severely in Mandevi than elsewhere, and when at last repressive measures were adopted it had almost completely disappeared from that quarter. The exodus that took place from Bombay was enormous. At the commencement of (the present year it was calculated that upwards of 200,000 people had left the city, spreading themselves
over
the
never
THE DUTIES OF BOARDS OF GUARDIANS. WE are of opinion that it is one of the duties of boards of guardians to grant relief and shelter to the vagrants, tramps, and such like persons who apply to them for relief. We are also of opinion that it is one of the duties of boards of guardians to administer that relief at the least possible expense to the ratepayers and consequently in a way which shall not tend to aggravate an evil which is one of the most difficult and pressing of our social problems. It is claimed, and claimed, we believe, rightly, that the Salvation Army by reason of its shelters has much to answer for ih attracting to certain districts and neighbourhoods a class of persons who make mendicity a means of livelihood, and who, when "trade"" is slack and they cannot get the necessary pence to swell the coffers of the Salvation Army, are obliged to seek the shelter of the casual wards and workhouses. Thus an increased burden is put upon the ratepayers, and the population of in too many cases an already overcrowded district augmented to an extent which, by reason of the character of that augmentation, is a menace to the public health. This being so it is surprising that a board of guardians should be found so apathetic to their responsibilities and duties as to attempt a procedure which encourages these pseudo-charitable institutions to carry on a work which is admitted by all who have rightly studied the question to be pernicious. From a letter in the Times from the pen of the Rev. J. E. Hand, assistant curate of St. Jude’s, it would appear, however, that the Bethnalgreen board of guardians have adopted the practice of sending men to the Salvation Army Homes, for whom they pay 5s. per week per man. These men are troublesome to the guardians, hence they shift their responsibility to the Salvation Army at the ratepayers’ expense. The Local Government Board do not appear to have sanctioned this practice (although we have not the letter written by the Local Government Board to the guardians on the subject before us), and had they done so we quite agree with the Rev. J. E. Hand that they would be"indirectly sanctioning the guardians to allow theirloafer’ paupers to enjoy immunity from any practical supervision by Poor Law Mr. Bramwell Booth has, of course, authorities." written a letter attempting to defend the guardians, but beyond correcting one or two errors in Mr. Hand’s letter which are obviously the result of hurried writing-and the assistant curate of an East End district cannot be expected to find time hang heavily upon his handshe practically makes no defence at all. Such statements as "Most of the men have remained in our employment
Whitechapel,
995
peninsula. Old writers asserted that the occurred south of a certain latitude, and as paper and find a most appreciative article on Sir J. Criohton- a matter of fact it has never crossed the equator ; but Browne’s introductory lecture, eulogising especially the great atmospheric heat cannot, as was alleged, be the - cheerfulness of the medical profession. The praise is just. sole cause of the exemption, because at the very time the Dr. Johnson said of Dr. Mead that he lived more epidemic was most severe in Northern India the temperature in the broad sunshine of life than any man he ever there was quite as high as it was in the south, which knew; and the same holds of all true disciples of" remained immune. Dr. Yersin’s method of treatment is the Asoulapius. They bring hope and relief. They "obviate" only one of which Dr. Bonneau speaks approvingly. It is as Cullen said " the tendency to death." They eliminate true that his results in Bombay were not so favourable as disease on a large scale altogether from the employments and they had been in Hong-Kong, but this was owing to the ,homes of men, and where they do not altogether succeed manner in which the serum was prepared. In China it was they fight it bravely when it comes. That they are obtained after the intravenous injection of living cultures, successful in a large degree is shown by their very cheer- whereas in India the latter were dead and were injected subYersin’s serum is likewise, he considers, fulness. If success were not their ordinary experience they cutaneously. valuable as a miserable. And be of all men most as would prophylactic, but Dr. Bonneau was not at all notoriously, the preventive quality of M. Haffkine’s with and as our J. Crichton Browne Sir contemporary impressed says, which he characterises as not only crude but him is the with the case. lymph, says, contrary agreeing Haffkine’s M. method, moreover, does not in his dangerous. the merit of novelty, having already been opinion possess THE PLAGUE IN BOMBAY FROM A FRENCH Ferran in Spain and Pfeffer in Germany. essayed by POINT OF VIEW. ,individual cases skilfully back to health. We are the assured of this when we turn over a few pages of the
more
all
same
plague
DR. BONNEAU, medical officer of the first class in the French Colonial Service, who was deputed by the Governor of the French Possessions in India to make a study of the outbreak of plague at Bombay, has embodied the fruits of ’his mission in a lucid and instructive article which appears in the Archives de Médeeine Navale et Coloniale for September. With regard to the genesis of the epidemic this writer comes to no positive conclusion. " It is certain," he says, ’’ that the first cases occurred in a densely populated native quarter where the merchandise of the entire world is heaped up in the greatest profusion, awaiting distribution either by means of exportation or else internally to meet the industrial and commercial requirements of the country itself. The produce of China is there stored side by side with the cereals from Northern India. Was the disease imported from Hong-Kong, or did it travel with the wheat from the sub-Himalayan districts1 This is Cera question that will probably remain unanswered." tain observers have found an argument in favour of the Himalayan origin of the pestilence in the enormous mortality :that took place among the rats infesting the go-downs where the wheat was lying, but Dr. Bonneau very effectively disposes of this theory by remarking that if more rats died there than elsewhere it was simply because they existed in greater number. The plague at first advanced slowly and insidiously, taking a long time to, as it were, put forth its roots, .and Dr. Bonneau is quite satisfied that if energetic repressive measures had been adopted soon enough it could easily have been stamped out. Unfortunately, nothing at all was done by the municipal authorities until it was too late to sum,marily extinguish the innumerable foci of infection which had had time to establish themselves over the entire city. Mandevi, the quarter first contaminated, " consists of an agglomeration of unclean houses that are overflowing with dlthy inhabitants. Not one single rule of hygiene is observed in this slum, where man and beast live together pell-mell amidst semi-darkness and respiring a heavy vitiated atmosphere. The sewers are not in working order, and on either side of the street close to the houses there are open drains about two feet in depth which, owing to defective flushing, are lined with an evil smelling deposit made up of vegetable and animal detritus."" And yet, in spite of this shocking condition of things, the pestilence did not rage more severely in Mandevi than elsewhere, and when at last repressive measures were adopted it had almost completely disappeared from that quarter. The exodus that took place from Bombay was enormous. At the commencement of (the present year it was calculated that upwards of 200,000 people had left the city, spreading themselves
over
the
never
THE DUTIES OF BOARDS OF GUARDIANS. WE are of opinion that it is one of the duties of boards of guardians to grant relief and shelter to the vagrants, tramps, and such like persons who apply to them for relief. We are also of opinion that it is one of the duties of boards of guardians to administer that relief at the least possible expense to the ratepayers and consequently in a way which shall not tend to aggravate an evil which is one of the most difficult and pressing of our social problems. It is claimed, and claimed, we believe, rightly, that the Salvation Army by reason of its shelters has much to answer for ih attracting to certain districts and neighbourhoods a class of persons who make mendicity a means of livelihood, and who, when "trade"" is slack and they cannot get the necessary pence to swell the coffers of the Salvation Army, are obliged to seek the shelter of the casual wards and workhouses. Thus an increased burden is put upon the ratepayers, and the population of in too many cases an already overcrowded district augmented to an extent which, by reason of the character of that augmentation, is a menace to the public health. This being so it is surprising that a board of guardians should be found so apathetic to their responsibilities and duties as to attempt a procedure which encourages these pseudo-charitable institutions to carry on a work which is admitted by all who have rightly studied the question to be pernicious. From a letter in the Times from the pen of the Rev. J. E. Hand, assistant curate of St. Jude’s, it would appear, however, that the Bethnalgreen board of guardians have adopted the practice of sending men to the Salvation Army Homes, for whom they pay 5s. per week per man. These men are troublesome to the guardians, hence they shift their responsibility to the Salvation Army at the ratepayers’ expense. The Local Government Board do not appear to have sanctioned this practice (although we have not the letter written by the Local Government Board to the guardians on the subject before us), and had they done so we quite agree with the Rev. J. E. Hand that they would be"indirectly sanctioning the guardians to allow theirloafer’ paupers to enjoy immunity from any practical supervision by Poor Law Mr. Bramwell Booth has, of course, authorities." written a letter attempting to defend the guardians, but beyond correcting one or two errors in Mr. Hand’s letter which are obviously the result of hurried writing-and the assistant curate of an East End district cannot be expected to find time hang heavily upon his handshe practically makes no defence at all. Such statements as "Most of the men have remained in our employment
Whitechapel,