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CHAPTER V.
DIRECT METHODS OF COMBATING PLAGUE.
Aims.
The aims set before the Plague Committee were to keep down the
death-rate while preventing panic and trade dislocation, and to lessen
the risk of a third epidemic.
The transference of the Plague-stricken to hospital, followed by
their return as convalescents, and the proved protective effects of house
disinfecting, combined in a great measure to allay panic and mitigate
commercial disaster. It is true that high wages, a certain familiarity with
plague, the difficulty of leaving Bombay, and the knowledge that plague
ruled in the Mofussil as well as in the City, combined to make the mass
of the people unwilling to move. Still it seems reasonable to suppose
that, if the death-rate had risen from the actual maximum of 230 a day
to 1,500, the Sholapur maximum on the Bombay basis of 750,000
people, or to 650, the Poona and the Karachi maximum, or even to 330,
the maximum of the previous Bombay epidemic, no temptation of
wages, no discomforts of detention would have prevented a flight from
Bombay which would have paralysed the trade of the city.
To lessen the risk of a third Plague epidemic in Bombay, in addi-
tion to the removal of the sick, the segregation of the tainted, and the
cleansing of the house, special attention was paid to the construction of
camps as a relief from overcrowding, to the vacation of infected and
unwholesome houses, and to the introduction of an improved provision
of light and air.
Apart from the cleansing of streets, the flushing of gullies,
and the other general preventive measures which were efficiently carried
out by the Health Department, so far as pure Plague operations are con-
cerned the main hope of a low death-rate lies in securing theremoval to
hospital of the sick at the earliest possible stage of the attack. The
means adopted by the Committee to secure the early removal of
the suffering were-information, simple house-searching, and house-
searching with cordons.
Imformation.
At the stage in the development of an epidemic of plague when
cases are few, scattered, and mild, and in places where no law is in force