Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/425

 SUL 417 deaths. The disease then subsided, but did not altogether disappear, and again assumed epidemic proportions in October, 1870. This outbreak was comparatively mild, the recorded deaths being under 1,000, and the disease again subsidled in February, 1871. During the succeeding months it was still present, but was not very fatal till October following, when it broke out again with great viruleace, anubering upwards of 3,000 victims in three months. In February, 1872, it had again all but disappeared, but once more became epidemic in March, and caused about 2,000 deaths during that and the three following months. In July, 1872, ceased to be epidemic, and since that time, with the exception of a few sporadic cases occurring chiefly during the warm weather, the disease lias entirely disappeared. The above brief account contains almost all that can be told of epidemic cholera in this district. Nothing positive seems to have been ascertained regarding the mode in which the discase was introduced, if it was introduced from without the classes of people chiefly attacked, the proportion of fatal cases, and many other points of interest regarding it. The general impres- sion of the Civil Surgeons who had to do with these epidemics seems to have been that the disease spread through the medium of the drinking water, the general neglect of conservancy in villages, and the pollution of wells and tanks used for drinking purposes, greatly favouring the spread of, if they did not actually produce the disease. Epidemic cholera is not peculiar to any season as the above account of its latest outbreaks shows, but the rains and the three months immediately following appear to be most favourable to it. As already noticed, this is the period when fever is also most prevalent. The epidemic of 1872, which began in March and lasted till June, may be looked upon as a revival of the severe epidemic of 1871, which for some reason received a check in January and February. Excluding the period of this outbreak, there appears a general coincidence between the season at which fever and cholera most prevail. It is worthy of remark, too, that the great mortality from the latter disease in 1871 was coincident with a very high death rate from fever, the heavy floods of that year appearing equally favourable to both, Though not epidemic every year, cholera appears to be always present more or less in the hot weather and rains. Looking at the mortuary returns of the last five years, it may in fact be said to be endemic in the district. Not a month passed, from 1868 to September, 1872, without some deaths being reported, and though the disease entirely disappeared during the cold wcather of 1872-73, sporadic cases again appeared in each month from April to November following: These sporadic cases are simi- far to all appearance to those that occur during an epidemic, and whatever may be the difference between the sporadic and the epidemic disease in point of causation, there is none to be detected in the symptoms presented by individual cases. So far as known at present, it is most probable the epidemic disease is either imported by travellers from a distance or spreads from neighbouring districts, and is not a mere occasional aggravation of the endemic disease, 53