Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/602

582 accommodate only 50. In a hut seven feet in length, breadth, and height five men were found, and several instances are given where similar conditions obtained. In our barracks 600 cubic feet per man is the minimum space allowed. In these bastis the space runs from 157 to 49 cubic feet. This would be bad enough if everything were clean and sweet in and about the huts, but, as the medical board puts the case, 'here we find an allowance per head going as low as practically one thirtieth of that given in barracks, and no ventilation, with filth ad libitum both in the room and in its surroundings, to say nothing of the filthy persons of its occupants, the sewage in the adjacent drains, and the accumulated filth in the neighboring latrines; and to this may be added the fact that the subsoil on which the huts are built is soaked through and through with sewage matters and littered with garbage and filth of all kinds.' The narrow gullies which give access to these huts are in keeping with the general character of the bastis, and we may well wonder that epidemic disease is not always present."

The probabilities are that the plague will continue in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras until it dies out from want of susceptible material. It is not at all likely, with the conditions in these cities, such as have already been described, that sanitary measures sufficiently energetic to destroy the bacillus will be resorted to. For some years to come these cities are likely to harbor the infection, and will remain, as they are now, nurseries for the disease.

The plague has not confined itself to the large cities of India, but has spread all over that country. It has extended into the northwestern provinces, has crossed the frontier, and passed into Baluchistan and Afghanistan. In many of the interior cities it has proved quite as fatal, in proportion to the population, as at Bombay and Calcutta. At Poonah the mortality has during some weeks been as high as eighty per cent of the cases, and four hundred deaths a week have been reported. At Sholapore, in the Punjab, far to the northwest of Bombay, the disease has prevailed in epidemic form.

With the plague widely diffused over the Indian empire, what measures have been taken to prevent its spread to other parts of the world? There are two routes by means of which the disease may pass from India to Europe. One of these is by ship through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean; the other is overland from the northwestern provinces of India through Afghanistan into southeastern Europe. In fact, there are three overland routes from northwestern India into Europe. One of these leads from Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, through Afghanistan into the Transcaspian Province of Russia. The Trauscaspian