THE SANITARY CONDITION OP DINAGEPORE, The
for
unhealthy
some
years
state of the station
past
of
Dinagepore
attracted the notice of the Govern-
Bengal, and a Committee was appointed in 1878, under the presidentship of Surgeon-Major R. Harvey, the Officiating Sanitary Commissioner, to report on the causes of and remedies for this. The ment of
March
results of the deliberations of the Committee are set a recent issu? of the Calcutta Gazette. The facts brought to light are eminently typical of circumstances causing excessive sickness in deltaic stations
forth in
and tracts.
It appears
that
Dinagepore
is
situated
upon the river Poornabhaba, which is joined to the south-west of the station by a small stream called the Ghogra. As happens with all deltaic l'ivers, the bed and banks of the Poornabhaba have been raised by deposit of silt above the level of the surrounding
country which
marshy
land
slopes situated
away
from
apparently
further side of the station.
it towards below and
Under
these
on
some
the
circum-
of the station is pi-obably always gradually been becoming more so. But when the Poornabhaba gets filled up during the stances the
imperfect,
drainage
and
has
THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
56
rains, its flood level "is considerably higher than the level of the Ghogra and of portions of the town." Dminage is then not only impeded but there is a back flow through the Ghogra and Kachai, an affluent of it. Seeing
that these streams
of the filth of the town
are as
relied
well
on
as
for the removal
the
drainage
of
its area, the effect of the state of matters depicted by the Committee on the health of its inhabitants
need
not excite
the
by
surprise.
committee
it imitates and
as
sooner
or
later
embankment
drainage
a new
remedy
proposed
the correct one, inasmuch anticipates what would happen
naturally,
across
The
is
namely, to throw Ghogra and
the mouth of the
channel for the town and
an
cut
the swamps
around and below it, which will join the Poornabhaba This work is calculated to seven miles lower down.
nearly 50,000 rupees, but, apart from the benefit the health of the station which it is intended to to cost
achieve, it will also render available for cultivation some marshy land now perfectly useless if not noxious. Changes such as these in the river system of the delta are constantly occurring, and we entertain no doubt
they contribute materially to the causation of periodical outbreaks of malarial fever which occur periodically throughout the Gangetic delta. The that
those
remedy
must
always be difficult drainage channels
and
costly, namely,
away from the raised opening river bed and bank to enter the river at a lower level out
or
another
same
new
convenient
advantage.
watercourse
presenting
the
[February 1,
1879.