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IX.-SANITATION.
Within the last year or so, owing to an increased general inter-
est, certain measures of anti-malarial sanitation have been adopted
here and there in the Duars; and although they have in the main
been more or less lacking in systematic application, they appear to
have had, in the case of European residents at least, a very notice-
able effect in improving the health of the community. Measures,
against native malaria, however, cannot be considered to be adequate
to the situation, or to have affected to any great extent the incidence
of the disease among natives.
But the prevalence of native malaria in an intense form is the
primary condition making the climate unhealthy for Europeans; and
it also forms the one real bar to satisfactory colonisation of the whole
tract. It is also responsible for the fact that only certain classes of
labour can be employed, while at the same time it reduces the effi-
ciency of even this labour in a very marked degree. Anti-malarial
sanitation and efficient prophylaxis for the native population must
therefore be considered the chief sanitary problem of the district and
requires the most careful consideration.
DRAINAGE AND ANTI-LARVAL OPERATIONS GENERALLY.
Selection of suitable sites for dwellings.-The situations of coolie
lines vary very greatly in the relation to anopheles breeding places.
Many lines have streams running through them, others are as far
removed from running or stagnant water as it would be possible to
place them: but as we have pointed out, malaria is equally prevalent
in all. We believe that only in very few cases would the selection of
line sites so as to avoid anopheles breeding places, have any marked
effect in reducing malaria under the existing conditions.
Gardens with abundance of high land usually have their coolie
lines built on sites possessing good natural surface drainage, but on
many gardens on lower land it would be a matter of great difficulty,
if not impossible, to suggest sites for lines more favourable as regards
the danger from malaria than those already occupied. Only in spe-