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 Fever destroys the life of the country; saps the world in which it is.

Look at the Burdwan fever; look at the Dengue fever.

'Dengue' is rarely fatal, but in its districts 'Dengue' is master, and 60 or 70 out of every 100 are 'down' with it!

Irrigation is essential in many parts of India, but irrigation with stagnant water is almost as injurious to crops as to health. Irrigation should be accompanied by improving the natural drainages of the country, so as to keep the water moving, however slowly.

Let me tell a curious history told me by one of the members of the first Bengal Sanitary Commission. In 1857 nine miles of country, with twenty-five villages, were laid waste by fever; death came sometimes in three hours; of 600 in a village only a few in the centre houses lived. All the others died or fled. All the other houses were unroofed and tenantless. In the other villages nothing was left but pariah dogs. The crops were uncut. The dead lay about in the hollows, unburied and unburnt, for there was nobody left to bury them.

Where the people did live they degenerated mentally and physically.

The cause of all this was a screw turned by a coolie, which flooded the low lands from the Ganges canal