1^04.] L. Rogers — Special Report on Fever in Dinajpur Dist» 35 



healthiness of the different parts of the district the death-rates per 

 thousand of population must be examined. 



Death-rates per thousand in each Circle from the Principal Diseases. 

 The distribution in the district of the different groups of villages 

 in which the enquiries were made has already been briefly indicated, 

 but some further remarks on the topographical conditions of these areas 

 must be made. At this the driest time of the year it is very difficult to 

 find any definite differences in the general surroundings of the villages 

 in different circles, all resembling each other exceedingly closely. The 

 whole district is one huge collection of rice-fields together with areas 

 where jute is grown, and here and there patches of jungle, especially in 

 the northern portion of the district. Numerous shallow half-dried up 

 streams traverse the district from north to south, mostly in wide sandy 

 beds, while among the rice-fields here and there small swamps of shal- 

 low weed-grown water still remain in the cold season. Tanks are fair- 

 ly numerous and, in many places, are situated at a distance of several 

 hundred yards from the villages, so that, their banks not being the 

 nearest and most convenient latrine, the water of many of them appears 

 to be good. There are also numerous wells in all parts of the district 

 except the south, where the water-level is much lower than elsewhere, 

 and wells therefore much more difficult to construct. In fact, the higher 

 the ground water-level the greater the number of village wells. The 

 water-supply, however, of neighbouring villages, whose general surround- 

 ings were similar, differed so little that no definite instances of varia- 

 tions in the death-rates, which could be attributed with any reason to 

 their water-supply, were met with. In a previous enquiry,^ which I car- 

 ried out in the Bogra district, I found a very definite relationship be- 

 tween the lowness of the ground water-level in the dry season and the 

 lowness of the spleen-rate, while the Malaria Commission have recently 

 shown that there is a definite relationship between the spleen-rate and 

 the proportion of children infected by the malarial parasites, or as, they 

 call it, the *' endemic index." This is a most important fact, as in a 

 single-handed enquiry of the comprehensive nature required in the 

 present instance it was impossible to attempt to work out the " endemic 

 index " in all the areas visited, while an attempt to do so on a limited 

 scale in the Bogra enquiry showed that in the minimal fever season of 

 the late cold weather it does not give results proportional to the labour 

 involved in carrying it out. In the present instance, therefore, I ex- 

 amined as many children between the ages of 2 and 10 as I could in 

 each circle, and also carefully took measurements of the ground 



1 Report on the efifect of the silting up of the Karatoya river on health of the 

 Bogra district, 1901. 



