The figures for Undhera are very valuable: "The conditions," says Surgeon-Major Bannerman, "approached very nearly the strictness of a laboratory experiment." Even the Commissioners are enthusiastic here.
Undhera is an agricultural village, 6 miles from Baroda. Plague broke out in it, in January 1898. A careful census was taken, and showed a population of 1029. By 12th February there had been 76 deaths. On that day the village was visited by Mr. Haffkine, Surgeon-Major Bannerman, and other experts, and 513 persons were inoculated:—By reference to the census papers, the whole of the inhabitants were called out, house by house, and the half of each household inoculated. In this way, an endeavour was made to inoculate half the men, half the women, and half the children in each family, and to arrange that a fairly equal proportion of the sickly-looking should be placed in each division. The plague lasted 42 days after the inoculations, and affected 28 families. On 4th April a house-to-house investigation was made by Mr. Haffkine, Surgeon-General Harvey, Surgeon-Major Bannerman, and Captain Dyson. The figures are as follows:—
| Population on 12th February. | Cases. | Deaths. | Mortality. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1029-76=953 | Inoculated, | 513 | 8 | 3 | 0.6 per cent. |
| Uninoculated, | 440 | 28 | 27 | 6.0 per cent. |
Thus, out of 28 families, where the protected and the unprotected lived and ate and slept together, the protected, 71, had 3 deaths; and the unprotected, 64, had 27. The percentage of attacks was four times higher among the unprotected; the percentage of deaths was ten times higher.
7. Khoja Community, Bombay
The head of this community, H.H. Sir Sultan Shah, Aga Khan, K.C.I.E., opened a private station for the inoculation of the community in March 1897, and again in December of that year. He was himself inoculated three times, and many of the community so often as five times. The work of inoculation went on daily, and by 20th April 1898 the number of persons inoculated or reinoculated was 5184. The whole community, according to a careful census taken at the beginning of 1898, numbered 9350; but, since many families had fled to avoid the infection, this number is too low. The Commissioners guess 9770: Haffkine, to the disadvantage of his own statistics, guesses so high as 13,330. The number of the inoculated or reinoculated shifted, of course, as the work went on: their average daily number during the four months of plague, January to April 1898, was 3814.
During these four months, the number of deaths from all causes in the whole community was 184. According to the average mortality of the community in times of no plague, the deaths from all causes during four months would be 102. It may fairly be assumed that the extra deaths, 82, were due to plague: and, indeed, 64 plague-deaths were either acknowledged by the relatives, or certified by the burial-books of the community. Of these 82 deaths, 3 occurred among the inoculated or reinoculated, and 77 among the uninoculated.
The Commissioners find fault with these figures: "Nevertheless, quite apart from the statistics put before us, which we think inaccurate, we do not doubt that inoculations had a good effect, especially as much weight must be allowed to the opinion of a community so intelligent as that of the Khojas."
8. Hubli
This, the greatest and most amazing of all instances of preventive plague-work, was done in a town of 50,000 persons. The following report, by Surgeon-Captain Leumann, was forwarded to the Plague Commissioners by Mr. E. K. Cappel, Collector of Dhárwár, with this comment:—