Health and Medicine in the Indian Princely States

1850-1950

Waltraud Ernst, Biswamoy Pati, T.V. Sekher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351678421
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Since the 1980s there has been a continual engagement with the history and the place of western medicine in colonial settings and non-western societies. In relation to South Asia, research on the role of medicine has focussed primarily on regions under direct British administration. This book looks at the 'princely states' that made up about two fifths of the subcontinent. Two comparatively large states, Mysore and Travancore – usually considered as 'progressive' and 'enlightened' – and some of the princely states of Orissa – often described as 'backward' and 'despotic' – have been selected for analysis. The authors map developments in public health and psychiatry, the emergence of specialised medical institutions, the influence of western medicine on indigenous medical communities and their patients and the interaction between them.

Exploring contentious issues currently debated in the existing scholarship on medicine in British India and other colonies, this book covers the 'indigenisation' of health services; the inter-relationship of colonial and indigenous paradigms of medical practice; the impact of specific political and administrative events and changes on health policies. The book also analyses British medical policies and the Indian reactions and initiatives they evoked in different Indian states. It offers new insights into the interplay of local adaptations with global exchanges between different national schools of thought in the formation of what is often vaguely, and all too simply, referred to as 'western' or 'colonial' medicine.

A pioneering study of health and medicine in the princely states of India, it provides a balanced appraisal of the role of medicine during the colonial era. It will be of interest to students and academics studying South Asian and imperial and commonwealth history; the history of medicine; the sociology of health and healing; and medical anthropology, social policy, public health, and international politics.

Section 1
Mysore

T.V. Sekher

1
Plague administration in Princely Mysore

Resistance, riots, and reconciliation

In the early twentieth century, one of India’s most feared and deadliest diseases was the plague. Plague ravaged India for two decades and sporadically thereafter, from its first appearance in Bombay city in August 1896, leading to the death of at least 12 million people.¹ India was recorded as having suffered about 95 percent of the world’s plague mortality during the period 1894 to 1938.² The population pressure, crowding, malnutrition, and lack of sanitation increased the vulnerabilities of the population to plague infection. It is also argued that apart from inducing massive mortality, the epidemic greatly disrupted millions of people – forced to evacuate their homes, stay in temporary sheds (camps), and detained for observations. “Plague was a savage cause of death and, equally, of social turmoil between the state and populace” (p-723).³ The approach of the colonial rulers, especially imposed during the plague epidemic of 1896–1897, provoked extremely hostile public reaction and stirred “up a great tide of alienation from Western medicine” (p-237), which in course of time forced the state to retreat to a less interventionist policy.⁴

In Mysore Province, with a population of 4,943,604 as per the Census of 1891,⁵ the plague first appeared in Bangalore on 12 August 1898. The epidemic wreaked havoc, particularly in Bangalore City and neighbouring areas. From 1898 to 1923, the disease claimed 2,05, 422 victims in the state.⁶ The outbreak of plague in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1896 gave rise to anxiety for both administration and public, particularly in the adjoining states. By the end of the year 1897, the plague had established itself and was increasing in virulence at Hubli, a populous town on the direct line of railway communication with Bangalore and only 80 miles from the Mysore frontier. This circumstance deepened the public anxiety and it was recognized that all possible precautions should be taken to prevent the introduction of the disease into the state.

While addressing the Dasara Session of the Mysore Representative Assembly on 17 October 1899, the Dewan, K.Seshadri Iyer, stated:

It was on 12 August, 1898, and in the city of Bangalore, that the plague first made its appearance in the State. The exact manner in which the disease was conveyed to Bangalore has not been satisfactorily traced, though there is a good ground for believing that its importation was in some way due to its prevalence in an epidemic form at Hubli and other stations on the Southern-Mahratta Railway, among whose coolies it first occurred, and to the families and friends of whose employees it was for sometime confined before spreading first to localities in close proximity to the railway goods-shed at Bangalore, and then to the other parts of the city. When the disease once gained a foothold in the Bangalore city, it soon spread with increasing virulence in every direction, passing rapidly into the Civil and Military stations, and the rest of the Bangalore district, and then into the Mysore city and the Mysore and Kolar districts and parts of the Tumkur district. The only districts that were altogether free of indigenous cases were Shimoga, Hassan, Kadur, and Chitaldrug.⁷

Administrative measures to control plague

During the earlier years of the epidemic, the preventive measures were mostly aimed at the destruction of the pathogenic-microorganisms, the plague bacillus, which was supposed to be the independent causative agent in the transmission of the disease. When the bubonic plague broke out in the neighbouring Dharwar district⁸ (part of Bombay Presidency) on 17 October 1897, the Mysore administration was alerted and took certain precautionary measures such as examination of passengers coming into Bangalore by rail and road, establishment of a plague hospital, and segregation of population and setting up of health camps. The government passed the Mysore Epidemic Diseases Regulation Act in 1897, which granted extensive powers to the government to deal with the plague. The Epidemic Diseases Hospital at Bangalore (originally known as Chattram Hospital), started in 1891 and located at a safe distance from the Railway Station, was available for accommodation and treatment of cases of infectious and communicable diseases amongst the residents and the pilgrims and others arriving by train. The government also issued a notification, dated 10 February 1898, by which the Presidents of the Municipalities were given power to question and to demand an enquiry into the cause of every death:

The President of the Municipality was empowered to require that the certificate of a medical officer should be obtained, showing the cause of every death within two hours after such death, and to presume, if a burial or cremation took place without such a certificate, that the death was due to plague. The rule was brought into force on 1 January, 1899, in Bangalore.⁹

Another important development was the passage of the Village Sanitation Regulation in 1898, to regulate conservancy measures in villages.

Some of the important precautionary measures initiated by the Princely Administration in Mysore¹⁰ were:

• (i) The establishment of railway medical inspection stations, at Harihar, Yeswantpur, Bowringpet, Bangalore Cantonment, Kengeri and Mysore City, under Notifications of the Resident or of the Durbar.
• (ii) The establishment of outposts and road inspection stations, manned by Police and village servants and within easy reach of segregation sheds; also of frontier inspection stations, especially in the Chitaldrug and Shimoga borders, systematically patrolled by special Inspectors; and the watching of the Bangalore City and Kolar Gold Fields at all approaches.
• (iii) The examination of passengers by rail and road.
• (iv) The detention, observation, or escort to their destination of persons arriving from infected areas or suspected of carrying infection.
• (v) The disinfection of houses and of passengers.
• (vi) The imposition on householders and others of the obligation to give immediate information of the occurrence of plague cases.
• (vii) The introduction of the “supervision system” into the Bangalore City, which was divided for the purpose into circles under Superintendents and further subdivided into blocks under Supervisors, who made daily inspection of each house with a view to ascertain all arrivals, departures, sicknesses, and deaths. On the outbreak of plague, this system was replaced by the Ward system, the Cities of Bangalore and Mysore being divided into Wards under Civil Ward Officers assisted by Medical Officers.
• (viii) The establishment of temporary plague hospitals and segregation and health camps at centres most likely to become affected.
• (ix) The stationing of Police constables at each burial and cremation ground in the Bangalore City to register every funeral, and, as far as possible, to ascertain the cause of death.
• (x) The encouragement of the destruction of rats by offer of rewards and otherwise.
• (xi) The prohibition of fairs and festivals at which large crowds were likely to collect, or of the attendance threat of persons from infected areas.
• (xii) The distribution of leaflets and the holding of meetings for explaining to the people the dangers of plague, the object of the measures adopted by government, and the necessity for popular co-operation.
• (xiii) The enforcement of special sanitary improvements in towns and villages.

The plague prevention measures reflected the seriousness of the Mysore government to address the epidemic, which had already set in the neighbouring Bombay Presidency.¹¹ For the prompt and effective administration of preventive measures, V.P. Madhava Rao, the Inspector General of Police at that time, was placed in charge of the measures with extensive discretionary powers, along with the Senior Surgeon and Sanitary Commissioner. On his elevation to the Council in April 1898, Madhava Rao continued to be in charge of the precautionary measures, under the designation of ‘Plague Commissioner in Mysore’.¹² Even before the outbreak of plague in the province, the preventive measures cost Rs. 29, 495 from Provincial Funds, and Rs. 15,859 from Municipal Funds, during the year 1897–1898.¹³

In October 1898, a separate temporary department, the ‘Plague Department’, was set up as a branch of the General Department of the government. The plague operations in the Bangalore City were at first under the control of the President of the Municipality aided by the Ward Officers, but as plague increased, a Chief Plague Officer was appointed in October 1898. In the Mysore City these operations were under the control of the Deputy Commissioner, assisted by a Chief Plague Officer and Ward Officers. In other places they were directe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• About the authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• SECTION 1 Mysore
• SECTION 2 The Orissan states
• SECTION 3 Travancore and Orissa
• Index