HUBLI 



221 



left in their homes throughout this epidemic ; only 

 their clothes, house, and property being disinfected 

 on the occurrence of a plague case or death in their 

 house. As the vast majority of plague cases have 

 never been notified before death in Hubli (nor, in 

 my experience of nearly two years, elsewhere, if 

 native supervision be largely resorted to), it will 

 readily be understood that the majority of the 

 inoculated have actually been living in the same 

 house, or even room, with a plague case (often of 

 the pneumonic type, whose terrible power of spread- 

 ing the disease was first shown by Professor Childe, 

 I.M.S., of Bombay) during the whole of the time 

 that case was living, probably attending on the 

 patient, breathing the same stuffy air, and, perhaps, 

 sharing the same blanket ; and I attach at the end 

 of this report a long series of cases where such con- 

 ditions have occurred, the non-inoculated dying of 

 plague, and the inoculated escaping, almost to a man. 



" Various critics on my work, not knowing what 

 the actual facts were and are, have at different times 

 asserted that the inoculated inhabitants of Hubli 

 left the town in larger numbers than the non- 

 inoculated. Exactly the reverse was the case. 

 The British officers on plague duty here, and all 

 the Divisional Superintendents, invariably replied 

 (officially and in writing when so required) that the 

 non-inoculated left Hubli in far greater numbers 

 and proportion than the inoculated ; and my own 

 observations entirely bear out this statement. 



"It has been urged that those who received 

 inoculation were of a class or classes better pro- 

 tected than others against plague by reason of 

 their habits, the food they eat, the houses they 

 live in, etc. In reply, I unhesitatingly state that 

 if there be but one town in India where that line 



