Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/601

Rh When the plague was first announced at Bombay a large number of its inhabitants, estimated at about three hundred thousand, left the city. There can be but little doubt that with these the germs of the plague were carried into the surrounding country. From Bombay the disease has spread out in every direction, until it has found its way into nearly every part of India. To-day the three large commercial cities of British India—Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras—are all infected. The manner of the introduction of the disease into Calcutta is somewhat uncertain, several different accounts being given as authentic. Dr. Cantlie says on this point: "The first case dealt with and reported upon in Calcutta gives an interesting history. The patient, a lad seventeen years old, came from Bombay, where evidently he had been exposed to infection, as his sister, who accompanied him, had seen several cases of plague in Bombay. Fifteen days before leaving Bombay he had noticed swelling first in one groin and then in the other, but never felt ill until his arrival in Calcutta, on September 24th. He was seen and carefully examined in Calcutta by honest observers, and a diplobacterium identical with the Kitasato bacillus was found in his blood. Not only so, but the clinical symptoms of plague were most manifest."

Another authority would have it that the plague was brought to Calcutta from Hong Kong by a British regiment which had been engaged in cleansing infected houses at Hong Kong. On this point Dr. Simpson makes the following statement: "In January, 1895, the regiment went to Calcutta, and this disease was first diagnosed as syphilis, then as malarial fever with bubo, and finally the cause was declared to be unknown. In June, 1896, one of the medical officers of the regiment was attacked with fever, and the glands of the neck, axilla, and groin were all enlarged. A goodly number of similar cases were met with in the town; moreover, the rats became sick, and the grain stores swarmed with diseased and dead rats. In spite of opposite evidence, it was well-nigh certain that plague in a sporadic form had been in Calcutta since 1895 or 1896." The bacillus of the plague has undoubtedly found Calcutta quite as well prepared for its reception as Bombay. In discussing a medical report on the sanitary condition of Calcutta, the Pioneer Mail makes the following statement: "London, with its population of over 4,000,000, has about 36,000 people to the square mile. In the thirteen wards of Calcutta there are only four below this figure; the remainder have from 46,000 to 144,000 per square mile, three wards containing actually over 100,000. Colootolah is most densely populated; the houses are literally crammed with people. One case is quoted where 250 persons were living in a space that should