Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/156

 148 KHE population. The quality of the water is supposed to be the cause of this disease. Its local distribution is unaccountably capricious, but, as a rule, the vast mass of the cases occur within two miles of the river bank, parti- cularly in Dhaurahra and Palia parganas. Venereal diseases are common, and frequently seen in their secondary and tertiary forms, a fact attribut- able to neglect or improper treatment of the primary symptoms. Among ophthalmic disorders those most prevalent here are ophthalmia and nyc- talopia; they occur principally in summer. Cataract among the aged is not uncommon. Dropsies of the skin and abdomen are often seen in subjects. who have long suffered from paludal fever, and enlarged spleens. Mortuary returns.—Mortuary returns have been prepared in this as in other districts. There is no establishment for the purpose, and little con- fidence can be placed in them, except in one point, that they never exaggerate the mortality. According to them the deaths in Kheri in 1870 were 16,272, or 22 in a thousand of the entire population; but as the whole mortality of Oudh was only 17, which is clearly underrated by perbaps 50 per cent, it is probable that the deaths in. Kheri likewise should be about 33 per cent. Even the 22 per cent. is the highest in the province. But, further, in all the other districts which exhibited a death-rate at all approaching this, as Rae Bareli, Sultanpur, epidemics either of cholera or small-pox were raging during the year in question. From these Kberi was free, and its high mortality was due entirely to the endemic fever which prevails for many months in each year. Fever carried off 14,638, or 20 per thousand of the entire popula- tion. Doubtless many of these would shortly have died from senile decay, but stilt the proportion of deaths from a disease which enfeebles for months fifty persons for one whom it kills, is most alarming in an economical point of view. In 1872 the deaths were 21,912, being at the rate of 29-36 per mille, the provincial average being 16-99; 19,968, or 90 per cent., were due to fever. There were 23 dispensaries in Oudh in 1871; in all of them only 61 persons died of fever in that year, and 28 of the deaths were in the single dispensary of Gola in Dhaurahra, the only one wbich, from its position, could be attended by the inhabitants of the most fever-stricken tracts. As these dispensaries are ouly used by the people in their immediate neigh- bourhood, they convey no idea of the total district mortality, but they give a correct indication of the comparative virulence and extent of the disease. It cannot be doubted that the mortality caused by fever in Kheri is, in great measure, due to the bad food and bad clothing of the people. We have seen that deaths in Kheri are more numerous proportionately than in any other district, and that fever has attained the dimensions- of a fearful plaguc. In the whole of Oudh cholera only carried off 16,032 in 1871, while fever took in Kheri alone 14,638, and almost 20,000 in 1872. The one kills 20 in the thousand annually, the other 11 per thousand. Such is the morbid state of the Kheri people as a whole; but on turning to a class of that people which we know is well lodged and fed-i. e., the criminals in the jail-we find that in 1871 they were actually the healthiest community of the kind in all Oudh. The deaths in Kheri jail were only 4:9 per thousand, while the provincial average