Common Sense Sanitation

Dear Sir,?I have noticed more than one article lately in the Indian Medical Gazette concerning the health of the Midnapore Central Jail. Will you kindly allow me to give my experience when in charge of that jail. I took over charge at the end of November, 1906, and was transferred from Midnapore on July 5th, 1907. For the year 1906, the death-rate of the jail reached the high figure of nearly 56 per mille, and the chief cause of this high mortality was dysentery. When I handed over the jail in July 1907 the death-rate stood at a small fraction more than 15 per mille. This phenomenal reduction in the death-rate was brought about without any heroic methods of treatment whatsoever, i.e., by ordinary commonsense sanitation. I began by sending back to the contractor the bad lice, etc., which he seemed to be in the habit of supplying to the jail. Dysentery patients were segregated and treated with saturated solution of magnesium sulphate and their stools destroyed, and on discharge the patients were again segregated in a postdysenteric gang. For certain poriods during my tenure of office Capt. Forster, I.M.S., was at Midnapore doing research work with reference to the causation of dysentery. Up to July 5th, when I left Midnapore, vaccine treatment had not been begun, i.e., it was used in one case only. I do not know what took place after July 5th, except that the mortality of the jail increased, and that in 1908, it went lip to a high figure. From Capt. Gillitt's article one would suppose that "systematic vaccine treatment" of dysentery had been carried out at Midnapore during the whole of 1907. This