Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/423

 SUL 415 of the drinking water from pollution, would no doubt do much good. The great want of the country, however, in relation to fever is drainage, and until some improvement is made in this, there is not likely to be much diminution in the prevalence of fever. Bowel complaints. The most important of the endemic diseases after fever are dysentery and diarrhoea. According to the mortuary returns the annual number of deaths from "bowel complaints," which are probably chiefly dysentery and diarrhoea, is from oth to oth of the whole mortality. It is impossible to say how near this is to the truth. Comparison with jail mortality would not be proper, as prisoners are placed under very different hygienic conditions from the free population, and these must greatly influence the mortality from bowel complaints. The police, again, receive careful medical treatment. The number of attacks amongst the police may, however, be taken as a measure of the extent to which these diseases prevail amongst the gene- ral population. During the last four years the police have been attacked with dysentery at the rate of 2-3 per cent. per annum, and with diar- rhoea at the rate of 13 per cent. per annum. It is, for many reasons, pro- bable that the general population suffered more than this, and, for them, 5 per cent. for both diseases together would not be an excessive estimate. The end of the rainy season and the beginning of the cold weather is the period when bowel complaints are most prevalent. The dry hot season is the period when they are least so. The fact that dysentery and diarrhæa prevail most at the same time of the year that fever is most common points to a common cause, and it seems probable that dysentery, at all events, is of malarial origin. There are many circumstances, however, in the ordinary life of the poorer classes of natives which render them peculiarly liable to bowel complaints. These are chiefly the exposure of the abdomen, which the native dress but scantily covers, to sudden chills, the drinking of impure water, about which the average native is not particular, and the eating of green vegetables and unripe fruits in inordinate quantities whenever procurable. In times of scarcity, too, the poorest classes are reduced to the necessity of supporting life on poor and unwholesome grains. Jail experience teaches also that a native whose strength has been reduced by fever and old people generally, are exceedingly liable to attacks of dysentery and diarrhoea, and the most careful attention to diet is necessary to ward these off. In their own homes, where no such intelligentcare is taken of them, their almost super- stitious attachment to their roti” (bread), or their inability to obtain food suitable to their condition, must, under these circumstances, often prove fatal to them. Leprosy.—Leprosy is a common disease in the district, and there are probably few villages of any size which do not contain soine victims of this frightful malady. The number of lepers was estimated in the census report of 1869 at 651 or 06 per cent of the population, but the writer cannot help thinking that the disease is much more common than this represents it to be.