Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/773

Rh March, 1857, the Sixty-sixth Ghorka Regiment marched simultaneously in two divisions about seventy English miles apart, from the plains to the hill-stations along the Himalayan heights—the A division toward Almorah, the B toward Lohnghat—and both wings, though free from cholera at starting, became infected en route. The A division, 611 men strong, arrived on the 13th of March, free from cholera, at Tarai, a narrow strip of land between the plain of the Ganges and the Naini Valley. Tarai is notorious for its fevers and cholera, while the Naini Valley is celebrated for its general salubrity and its remarkable freedom from epidemics of cholera. The division left Tarai the morning after its arrival, passed into the healthful Naini Valley, and halted at the hill-station of Almorah. The first case of cholera showed itself in the Kaini Valley twenty-four hours after the first opportunity for infection. The first fatal case occurred on March 16th, two deaths occurred on the 17th, ten on the 18th, nine on the 19th and one on the 22d. These numbers show a mortality of nearly ten per cent. The B division was 361 strong, and passed through Tarai about a week after the A division, remained there but one day, and reached Lohnghat on the 23d of March. The first fatal case occurred on March 21st, while the division was still in Tarai; there were two fatal cases on the 22d, eighteen on the 24th, eight on the 25th, one on the 26th, and one on the 27th. Fatal cases thus occurred within a period of seven days. Such statistical facts, which might be multiplied, have as much value, as direct experiments, as infection through the linen of cases of cholera. It is strange, however, that most of the "cholera linen" first originated in the Naini Valley, in Almorah and Lohnghat where the disease did not spread further, and where certainly disinfection by carbolic acid or corrosive sublimate was not thought of. But the contagionists have no eyes for such facts. Just as was the case with the Ghorka regiments, so was it with the pilgrims at Hard war. On April 15th the great mass of the pilgrims—who had been quartered on a flat, partly marshy tract of land, about a square mile in extent, for several days—broke up and departed, so that a stream of 3,000,000 infected individuals for the most part, notwithstanding the influence of the bathing in the Ganges, reeking with filth, began to spread abroad over all India. According to the contagionists, an epidemic of cholera ought to have broken out in every place to which the wandering pilgrims came. In my view, epidemics may break out only where the time and local conditions are favorable; and where these conditions do not exist an epidemic is impossible, as the case of the Ghorka regiments proved. Bryden expresses himself in the following terms on the Hardwar cholera: "From all accounts which have been written concerning the outbreak at Hardwar, the impression is gathered that the epidemic was by no means a typical one. That is only the case, however, if the facts are considered in the light of preconceived theory. For those who search the statistics the facts come out in their true