Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/422

 414 SUL probable that the mortality is nothing like what it is represented to be in the mortuary returns, where it appears as the cause of more than half the deaths in the district. The great causes of the fever that prevails in the district appear to be the defective drainage and the annual saturation of the soil by the rains, The surface is so flat and the natural drains so few that surface water cannot find a ready escape. It accumulates wherever there is a hollow in the surface, forming stagnant pools, or sinks into the ground raising the subsoil water level. In many places this rises in the rains to within a foot or two of the surface. In this way the soil becomes waterlogged, except in the immediate vicinity of the water conrses, and the immediate resultisanoutbreak of fever. The period of the year from July to Noven- ber being that during which the ground is thus saturated is the sea- son in which fever is most prevalent. Its severity appears to be propor- tionate to the rainfall; the greater the fall the more prevalent the fever. The amount of fever depends also on the manner of the rainfall, When the showers are moderate and occur at intervals the water escapes by percolation into the soil or by evaporation, and the result. ing fever is proportionally moderate, but when the rain falls in heavy bursts, lasting for days together as it sometimes does, the soil becomes completely waterlogged, extensive tracts of land are flooded, and fever breaks out with great severity. The rainy season of 1871 was marked by heavy floods in September, and as a consequence of this the number of deaths reported from fever during that and the three following months was very great, more than the whole numbers set down to the same cause in 1872 when rain fell more equally and at greater intervals. In proportion as the surface-water dries up and the subsoil water level sinks, the fever diminishes until it reaches a minimum in the dry hot season. The cultivation of rice, which is extensively grown during the rains, most greatly assist in the production of fever by obstructing the surface drainage, and the decay of the rank vegetation which springs up during the rains may also have an effect in producing fever. The latter cause cannot, however, be a very powerful one as cultivation is general through- out the district, and jungly tracts are few and of limited extent; at the same time many marshy places are covered with a kind of long coarse weedy grass and other weeds, which in process of rotting and drying up under the hot sun may give forth malaria. Perhaps the alluvial nature of the soil itself may have much to do with the prevalence of malarious fevers. It is impossible to say in the absence of reliable statistics whether increased cultivation has had any effect in lessening the prevalence of fever of late years. Conservancy has as yet made but little progress, being almost entirely confined to the small town of Sultanpur itself, and its effect in diminishing theprevalence of fever has yet to be tried. The clearing away of rank vegetation from within and around villages, and the protection