(2)
without my having visited these localities expressly for this purpose. The budget
grant for my travelling expenses was so reduced for the year 1876-77 that I have
been unable even to inspect most of my dispensaries and sub-divisions since the
commencement of the year 1876-77, much less undertake on the receipt of the
circular visits to localities affected with leprosy.
I have ascertained that out of a population of 2,030,000 in the Burdwan
District, inhabiting 5,181 villages or towns, 4,915 persons in 1,885 villages are
classed as lepers. I say "classed" because I am certain that many cases of
secondary and tertiary syphilis are looked upon by the natives of this part of the
country as leprosy. Many lepers that I have examined have attributed the out-
break of their symptoms to syphilis or to salivation for the cure of syphilis, and a
great confusion of the two diseases exists in the minds of most natives of this
district. We may, therefore. fairly consider that amongst these 4,915 cases are a
considerable number of persons suffering not from leprosy but from syphilis, and put
them against those lepers whose symptoms, if merely those of ansthetic leprosy
without eruption, are as yet unrecognized by their neighbours.
This number gives a percentage of 0.24 of the total population.
The highest percentages in any individual thannahs are 58 and 55 in Raksha
and Raneeguge and the lowest .02, 0.04 and 05 in Jehanabad, Culna and Raynah.
The annexed statement shews the names of the thannahs in the district, their
population and number of villages, as well as the number of villages in which
lepers are found, the number and percentage of lepers and the names of villages
in which more than ten lepers are said to be found.
Roughly the greatest percentages of cases appear to exist in the portions of
the district on or bordering on the laterite soil and jungle lands, while the smallest
percentages are found in the thannahs in the South and East of the district compris-
ing the alluvial lands lying between and near the great rivers.
Percentage of lepers amoungst Mussulmans 13
Ditto ditto Hindus 25
The Mussulman lepers are to Hindu lepers as one to eight nearly, while the
census returns shew 347,766 Mussulmans
to 1,682,059 Hindus in Burdwan, prov-
ing that the disease is less common
amongst Mussulmans than amongst Hindus.
The proportion of females affected was not stated in all the returns; but out of
3,015 lepers 564 were females, or about one to every five males affected. In the
annexed statement I have given the names of the villages in each thannah in which
more than ten lepers are to be found. Should it be deemed necessary special inqui-
ries may be made in such villages as are reported to contain many lepers. I can at
present give no information regarding the special peculiarities of such localities
or any special conditions under which the people in these localities live favourable
to the continuation or propagation of the disease, no opportunity in the ordinary
course of my duty having offered itself for the acquirement of such information.
With regard to the propagation of the disease either by contagion or hereditary
taint, I may mention here that amongst 30 lepers whose cases were detailed in my
annual reports on leprosy dated July 1875 and 1876, I only found thirteen who
acknowledged to any hereditary history of the disease. Of the 30 ten acknowledged
to having had syphilis and twelve denied both syphilis and hereditary leprosy.
As regards contagion, of the 30 only one man attributed his disease to
having lived with other lepers and denied hereditary taint; but as he also stated
that in his village (in Beerbhoom) there were ten or twelve other lepers out of a
population of one hundred or so, the denial of hereditary taint is almost worthless.
In my opinion I have seen nothing in the cases of leprosy that have come
under my observation to support the popular idea that the disease is contagious, and
the minute pathology of the disease, shewn by recent observers to be a disease of
the nerve trunks, is strongly against any such theory. The purely tubercular form
of the disease is much more rare than the ansthetic.
Of the 30 cases treated in the Burdwan Leper Jail between July 1874 and July
1876 only two were of pure tubercular leprosy, or 6.6 per cent. In addition to the
30 cases treated there were several other convicts suffering from slight degree of
ansthetic leprosy whom. I did not judge proper to relegate to the leper ward But
without a personal examination of all the lepers in the district I can only assert, as a
matter of opinion, that (1) the ansthetic form of the disease is many times more
common than the tubercular form; (2) that the disease is chiefly propagated by
hereditary taint, appearing usually in adults; (3) and that the disease is very pre-
valent in some parts of the Burdwan District.