Page:Life or Death in India.djvu/12

 to between 80 and 90 per 1,000. In other words, 17 men only die instead of 70.

A few results for 1871, from different groups of formerly most unhealthy Bengal stations, tend to show that the improvement in health is going on; thus:

In Bengal Proper the death-rate for the ten years preceding 1870, including a time of sanitary improvement, was 29½ per 1,000; and the daily sick nearly 7 per cent., or 70 per 1,000. In 1871 the death-rate was 18&middot;72 per 1,000, and the daily sick-rate 5 per cent., or 50 per 1,000.

Let us here add, that in round numbers the whole Indian Army went once-and-a-half times into hospital, and about 5½ per cent. of the force was always in hospital, during the year 1871, instead of nearly double the number.

We all remember the frightful sickness and mortality of Fort William. Its sick-rate continues rather high, but its death-rate in 1871 was only 10 per 1,000, less than a tenth part of its former death-rate: and 2½ per 1,000 less than the death-rate of 1870.

In Oudh the death-rate from 1860 to 1869 was 28½ per 1,000. In 1871 it was under 23. The constantly sick had also fallen from 69 to 61 per 1,000.

At Cawnpore much has been done to improve the site, and the station shows a death-rate of only 13; while Benares and Allahabad, in which less has been done, and Dinapore, in which we do not hear of much done, show quite double this rate of death.

Meerut and Rohilcund, in the ten years before 1870, were sick at the rate of 72 per 1,000, and sick