attended not only by an enormous diminution in the district death-rate, but the people have improved in civilisation as well as in health.
7. But one more word about country districts.Bengal. Country Districts and Villages.
And let us remember that Bengal is the most thickly populated country in the world—a country of villages.
Till country drainage is introduced, till agriculture is improved, till irrigation and drainage are combined—both better when together, the first dangerous when apart—no great improvement in health, civilisation, or vigour of the people can be expected.
The 'drain' in another sense, the drain upon human life and happiness, of fever in India is literally untold. But as far as can be told—in 1871, a peculiarly healthy year, about one-and-a-half millions of people died in India from fever, or nearly 12 in every 1,000, or 23 times as many as cholera destroyed.
But this is a mere trifle compared with the ravage fever commits in sapping the strength and vigour of the country, in making the young old, the healthy infirm for life, the industrious helpless invalids, the rich poor, the thriving country a waste.
The deaths must first be multiplied by 50 or 60 to give us the attacks.
Then, a man who has once had a bad attack of malaria has it for life.
And almost all this fever is malarial.
Cholera destroys life, but does no more.
