THE PLAGUE IN INDIA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2132, 15 July 1907, Page 4

THE PLAGUE IN INDIA.

The Secretary of State for India lias officially stated in tlie House of Commons tlie appalling fact that between April, iyUO, and the same month in the current year, 5,250,000 persons have died of the plague in Hindustan. The magnitude of the mortality can bo best appreciated b3’ reflecting that.it exceeds by one-fiftli the number of the entire population of Australia. If we can imagine this swept away by an epidemic in a. single year, we shall be in a position to measure the awful dimensions which the plague has assumed in India. And yet the experience of Europe in tlie Middlo Ages suffices to show that the disease is prevcntablc, and, except in a few sporadic cases, has been pretty well extirpated in that continent, where, incredible as the assertion may appear, yet it can be proved upon historical evidence, in the fourteenth century, one-fourth of the imputation perished by what was then popularly known as the Black Death, and Englond alone lost more than double that proportion of her inhabitants from the same curse. If then the science of sanitation has abolished this form of pestilence in the Mother -Country, and pure air, pure water, and personal cleanliness have been the chief co-efficients in bringing about that beneficial change like causes should produce like effects in India, where, unfortunately, the habits of 200,000,000 of people, formed centuries ago, and persevered in with obstinate tenacity, oppose a formidable barrier to their amendment. And when it is remembered that- a. religious superstition causes thousands of Hindus, alien dying, to be brought down to the banks of the Ganges to breathe their last, and that their corpses aro then thrown into the sacred stream, the waters of which are drunk bv the living, we can understand how the very beliefs of the people are conducive to the spread of epidemics, and how difficult is the task of the Government in striving to lessen the mortality of its subjects in the great dependency which is under British rule.