Page:How People May Live and not Die in India.pdf/26

 That something may have been done in the way of cleansing, ventilation, ablution, arrangements, means of recreation, is possible.

But as to ventilation, it may almost be said that it is better to keep the foul air out than to let it in, at least at certain stations of which we have reports up to nearly the latest date from India.

As to cleansing we have the report of a Government Commission on the last cholera, dated July 21, 1862, which tells us that, at a large station where cholera was fatal, the filth from the latrines was thrown down at places 100 yards from the barracks—that dead animals and every kind of refuse are accumulated in the same places without burial—that, before the cholera appeared, there were abominable cess-pools poisoning the whole atmosphere—that neglect of the commonest principles of sanitary science favoured the epidemic,—that the filth from the native latrines was used for feeding sheep!—that, for all this, the local military authorities had not neglected "conservancy in any unusual degree," the reporters state—and that, bad as they considered it, the station was kept in much better order than many that they had visited.

We have also two printed documents of the Public Works Department, dated Calcutta, June 26, and September 9, 1863, proving that the capital of India was in a much worse state than appeared from the Stational Report sent to the Royal Commission in June, 1860.