In Poona it was thought there was too much water about, and the officer of health undertook the remedial measure of draining a rather nice pond that used to be behind the Deccan Club, and converting it into as malarial a marsh as I have ever seen outside West Africa. The authorities, in their perplexity, also set about cleansing the quarters and homes of the Indian population, who, I suppose, are, on the whole, the most scrupulous about washing and cleaning of any working people in the world. They tried disinfectants, and poured thousands of pounds in the form of chemicals down drains, ditches, and streets. Sometimes, by mistake, they poured things that do not disinfect, and still the plague went on. They tried “segregation.” They divided the city into compartments under military guard, and sent British soldiers into the homes to examine men, women, and children, and take them off to isolated hospitals if there was a sign of plague. The symptom from which the plague takes its name of “bubonic” is the swelling of the great glands in the groin into hard lumps. No greater profanation of the Indian reverence for home and women could be imagined than this forcible entrance and examination by men—by soldiers of another race. No matter how kindly and decent and respectful our men were, no virtue on their part could prevent their presence and action from infuriating any population, especially in an Asiatic town. Riots broke out, and when I was in Poona, a small stone was put up to mark the spot on the country road to Government House, where the Chairman of the Plague Committee had been murdered, together with a young officer who happened to be with him. When the youth who conceived the deed was sentenced, he said to the judge, “You may hang me to-morrow, but my soul will at once pass into another body, and in sixteen years it will be fighting against the English again.”
The kindly zeal, the strenuous measures, the fatherly concern, the haste to do something, the utter inability to understand another point of view, are alike characteristic of our Government and of the elephant that sat on the orphaned eggs to hatch them.
From that time, I believe, arose a peculiar bitterness and feeling of distrust towards our rule that slowly permeated the country, and are still particularly strong in Poona itself. But their origin is distant now, and when I was there all our old methods had long been abandoned. There was now no examination for suspected cases, and no military searching of houses. The people were not “segregated,” and general disinfection was given up. Inoculation and “health camps” had become the Government methods now. The object of inoculation was the same as similar processes in other diseases, like small-pox or typhoid; the object of the “health camps” was simply to separate human beings from rats.
A Health Camp.
In a Village.
[Face p. 50.
That old connection between rats and plague had lately been examined afresh, chiefly by Dr. Turner, the Public Health Officer in Bombay, and the theory of the rat-flea had sprung into science. Contemplate a dead rat lying on your floor in the day-time, and you will find numerous fleas leaping up and down upon his body. If you are wise and prudent, you will rapidly pour kerosene over him from a distance, and then set him alight. For if, having seen him brewing in the air, you do not thus nip him in the bud, you are likely to fall a victim to the plague after sunset. A rat’s fleas are not the harmless, homely insects that we know. This species of flea has a special predilection for rats, and they will not leave their favourite home if they can help it, at all events by day. At night, when the rat is dead, they have to go, and then, as a last resort, they will take refuge on a human body for want of better sustenance. But with them they bring the germ that has killed the rat.
Whether they themselves infect the rat in the first instance, or whether they only transmit from him a bacillus which the rat has developed from other origins, I have not discovered; but I suppose the latter. Nor am I quite sure whether the fleas die of plague themselves or remain immune. Anyhow, the theory is that when once they have passed the germ into a human being’s blood, the plague is assured. In a climate like India’s the most careful and cleanly people can never be secure against fleas, for, wash as they will, some insect or other is pretty certain to be biting them every minute of the day and night, and it is difficult to distinguish one bite from another. A further terror is that the little grey squirrel with paler stripes, which draws no distinction of race or riches, and swarms throughout India, even on the roofs of the wealthiest bungalows, is quite as much a favourite with the fleas as any rat could be. While I was in Poona they were climbing over my verandah and scampering across my floor by dozens, and I took a peculiarly personal interest in their health, which happily appeared excellent.