Report on epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis in India / by C.J. Robertson-Milne.

  • Robertson-Milne, C.J.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report on epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis in India / by C.J. Robertson-Milne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    Carter related a sporadic case which he had met with in the previous year and which, he said, corresponded exactly to those seen bV him in 1878. J To Surgeon (now Lieutenant-Colonel) H. P. Dimmock, (14) however, belongs the honour of recognising and fully describing the disease in its epidemic form. In April 1884 he submitted an elaborate and very interesting report of an epidemic which prevailed among the convicts of the Shikarpur Jail during the cold season of 1883-84. The mortality in this jail had, for some years previously, attracted attention : sporadic cases of fever with sudden cerebral symptoms, frequently fatal, had raised the death-rate; these had been returned as Congestive Apoplexy, Inflammation of the Brain, etc. It was not until Dimmock took over charge of the jail that he reconciled the true nature of the disease with that known as cerebro-spinal fever or meningitis. The story of this outbreak is best told in Dimmock's own words':— In May 1883 two hundred of the finest men were marched into Sukkur and were there employed on the embankment approaches and other works of the Indus River Bridge. They were encamped in 'rowties' (huts) on an open level ground among the low-lying mag- nesian limestone hills. Towards the end of October, the weather, which had been very hot, changed and a cool east wind began to blow at night and in the early morning • at the same time it began to be very cold and coincidently with this there appeared amongst the convicts of the Sukkur gang first of all and then amongst convicts of the jail at Shikar- pur cases of the disease which is known as cerebro-spinal fever. In this epidemic there were thirty-eight attacks with twenty-seven deaths ; but, as a reference to the statistics of the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India would seem to show, only a few of these would appear to have been thus officially returned. Similar cases occurred at the same time among the Shikarpur Police and also among the free populations of the Shikarpur, Hyderabad, and Jacobabad districts. In Hyderabad a small epidemic of thirteen attacks with nine deaths was observed in 1884-85 at the penal settlement of Nara by the officer in charge, Assistant Surgeon Dadachanji. Although the above is the earliest accurate record which we possess in India, the disease had been previously notified from certain jails and native regiments. In 1881 cerebro-spinal fever appeared for the first time in the statistical tables which accompany the annual report of the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India (15) ; in every subsequent year attacks and deaths have been recorded in that compila- tion, as a reference to the following table will show.