Page:Life or Death in India.djvu/26

 As a consequence, cholera cases were concealed.

The troops also had to bear their share of this mediæval infliction. The evils are described as 'very great.' 'The troops are exposed to form cordons at the very time that exposure, and especially exposure to the night-air, is calculated to prove most mischievous.' Two stations, Meean Meer and Umballa, appear to have suffered from this. Both supplied complete cordons, and both suffered severely from cholera. No better reductio ad absurdum of the whole practice could be given than the fact that the fear of spreading cholera interfered with the more decisive moves of troops which were their best chance of safety from cholera.

And then, to crown the whole, there does not appear to have been a single instance in which quarantine could be rigidly enforced.

The Government of the Punjaub has taken the common-sense course of prohibiting quarantine except by special orders; and in the case of organised bands of pilgrims.

Sanitary reformers, like other reformers, have more to fear from their friends than their enemies—

But we must stop; only, however, to bear emphatic witness how great are the sanitary deeds already achieved, or in the course of being achieved, by the gallant Anglo-Indian, as formerly we bore emphatic witness against the then existing neglects.