436 Leprosy in India. [part ii. 



Notwithstanding all this, however, the statistics are sufficiently exact with regard 

 to such questions as the geographical prevalence of leprosy in this country to be of 

 the utmost value, both to those who are engaged in the study of its causation, and 

 to those who have been anxiously endeavouring to devise means for dealing with it 

 in a practical manner. 



We have gone over these figures very carefully, and have endeavoured to extract 

 from them what appeared to us their most important features ; we have also attempted 

 to bring the returns of the different Presidencies and Provinces into such relation 

 as to be fairly comparable. In some of the cases we have found considerable difficulty 

 in doing so, owing to the great disproportion in the population of the areas which 

 form the divisions, collectorates, and districts in the three Presidencies ; for example, 

 the population of a single division in Bengal — that of Burdwan — is equal to nearly 

 half the population of the whole Presidency of Bombay. These we have attempted 

 to correct as far as possible, and trust that a sufficiently succinct Tabular Statement 

 of the distribution of the disease over British India has been devised to enable those 

 interested in the question to estimate with a fair amount of accuracy the degree of 

 its severity and the particular parts of the country specially affected. 



In order still further to simplify this question, we have compiled a map of the 

 disease as it is distributed over the country, which represents, graphically, the Tabular 

 Statements gathered from the different censuses. The map has been very carefully 

 compiled, and may be looked upon as representing in a fairly accurate manner the 

 distribution of the disease in accordance with the most recent official returns. Every 

 district in the country was separately picked out on maps drawn on a large scale 

 and tinted in accordance with the ratios found in the various columns in the original 

 Census Eeports, and the sheets were subsequently reduced to more portable dimensions. 

 We have to acknowledge the great assistance which we obtained from Captain Waterhouse, 

 Assistant Surveyor-General of India, in carrying out this scheme. 



A glance at this map shows that there are three districts — large tracts of the 

 country — where leprosy prevails to an extraordinary extent : namely, Beerbhoom and 

 Baficoorah, in the Burdwan division of Lower Bengal ; the Kumaon division of the 

 North-Western Provinces, extending across the southern range of the Himalayas ; 

 and the Deccan and Konkan divisions of the Bombay Presidency. The latter area, 

 considered as a whole, does not show such an extreme prevalence as the two others: 

 leprosy is, however, extremely prevalent, and in some districts, such as Barsi, Sowda, 

 and Eajapur, abounds to a degree as great as is manifested in Beerbhoom, Bancoorah, 

 and Kumaon. 



Total Number of Lepers in the Three Presidencies. 

 The accompanying summarised Tabular Statement shows that there are more 

 than 99,000 leprous persons in British India alone, or at the rate of 54 cases in every 

 100,000 of the population : — 



