that was not open in the streets, or any system whatsoever of sewage. In Calcutta it was the same, till comparatively recent times. To ninetenths of its inhabitants clean water was unknown, and they drank the filthy sludge of the river, which was at once the cesspool and the common graveyard of the city. The capital of India was officially declared to be unfit to live in. So squalid is what those who do not know it, term "the gorgeous East."
It must be said at once that, in this department too, we are doing something. As regards Burma, the accounts of the Burmese municipalities, and of the municipalities in Bengal, show that even here, if we go down into detail, a beginning has been made, though it should be borne in mind that progress is limited by the consideration that no taxation is more unpopular in India than taxation for local purposes. In our medical colleges, too, we are now training Indians to serve with aptitude and success in our hospitals and dispensaries. Besides, a corresponding organisation has been set on foot for training women, to doctor, in the hospitals and dispensaries which we have established for them, the hitherto neglected members of their sex.
Yet, to look broadly at the matter, the battle for health has hitherto gone against us. The triple alliance of the rat and the flea and the mosquito has beaten the government of India. The modern Juggernaut is the bacillus unrestrictedly trampling down its millions.
