Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/16

 HIS POLITICAL CAREEB AND DEATH. T

Beadon, Sir William Grey, and Sir George Campbell, all of whom considered him a most useful and valuable councillor. If he had lived, he would have probably been honored with a seat in the Viceregal Council. In consideration of his distinguished public services he was made a Companion of the most Exalted Order of the Star of India in 1876, and honored with the title of Raja in 1877.

We have already stated that he was appointed in 1864 a member of the Epidemic Fever Commission. His clear intellect at once saw that the doctors were pursuing a wrong course in essaying to trace the cause of the disease. It was neither the trees, nor the tank, nor the ricefields, which had given birth to the malady. He laid his hand upon the right place, and said that the fever being of an endemic character and also of the same type, which had decimated Gour and Cassim Bazar, in times past, cannot be new, and that it must have originated from the same cause, that had produced the disease in those towns. Accordingly he held that it was sub-soil humidity, however caused, which lay at the root of the disease.

He wrote a series of articles on the subject in this paper, which he reprinted in a pamphlet form, and which were received with much favour. He had the satisfaction to see his theory embraced with open arms by the doctors, who had hitherto shewn it a cold shoulder. The government also accepted this theory, and recognized it in a legislative enactment, we mean the Embankment Act, and also issued instructions for its practical enforcement in towns and municipalities. If Raja Degumber had done nothing else, the service, which he thus rendered to the cause of humanity would enshrine his name in the memory of his countrymen. In the Orissa Famine of 1866, he zealously co-operated with Government in devising measures of relief. He possessed estates in Cuttack, and was thus in a position to obtain accurate information regarding the condition of the people in the famine-stricken districts. And his first