Inaugural address / by Sir Joseph Fayrer.

  • Fayrer, Sir Joseph, 1824-1907.
Date:
[1898]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inaugural address / by Sir Joseph Fayrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    19/26 (page 353)
    As attention lias been directed to this, as well as to other possible causes, it is to be hoped that the evil may be controlled. The death-rate of the Native Army does not shew so great a diminution, but here too there is improvement. In 1889 the death-rate was 12*94 per thousand. „ 1890 55 55 15-91 55 „ 1891 55 55 15-44 55 „ 1892 55 55 14-97 55 „ 1893 55 55 10-29 55 „ 1894 55 55 10-76 55 „ 1895 55 55 11-60 55 Another class about which we have reliable statistics is the jail population, tary measures. and here the For example- mortality is higher, despite sani- In 1889 it was 36-56 per thousand. „ 1890 „ 31-49 „ „ 1891 „ 31-89 „ „ 1892 „ 36-83 „ 1893 „ 25-01 „ 1894 „ 31-87 „ „ 1895 „ 27-61 The high rate of sickness and mortality in the Indian jails has been a subject of anxious consideration to the Government of India and the sanitary authorities. No pains—I may say no expense—are spared in dealing with it. The abnormal con- ditions of prison life, and perhaps occasional defects in archi- tectural construction, may in some measure account for it, and the probability is that were not every sanitary precaution rigidly enforced the mortality would be higher than it is. As regards the vast civil population we have not only got to deal with epidemics, famine and long established modes of living, which obstruct improvement, but also with ignorance, prejudice and religious scruples, which tend to make the natives doggedly resist all measures taken for the amelioration of their condition. They persist in their ancestral modes of social life, resist all changes, and, as we have lately seen, have risen in revolt against the well-meant measures devised by authority for saving them from plague, cholera, and other pestilence. Their indolent habits, prejudiced minds and fatalistic creed all stand in the way, but even the natives of India are being gradually educated into a better comprehension of the value of sanitary measures, and, as time progresses, it is to be hoped that under the firm and judicious administration of the authorities, sanitation may prove as beneficial to thenl as it has been to others. Though we know that improvement is in progress it is not so easy to shew