The Plague in India.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIC, Issue 13432, 2 November 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Plague in India.

The greatest, catastrophe: the 'world has ever known is in* progress at this moment, and-the world recks little or nothing of it. . T ~ - This is plague epidemic in India, which has now been raging for more than eleven years, and which , so far from showing any tendency to die out, keeps steadily increasing in intensity. Thus, during the. six weeks /ending May 11th last 481,892 persons perished from it, or, at the rate of over' 80,000 deaths a week. ■ -w Nothing approaching the appalling horror represented by figures has ever been recorded before. The nearest t-r it was in 1905, when during the laet \. eek in March/the epidemic was. responsible for 57,702' deaths. -.';"': ■..-■■' ■',' No pestilence of ancient or modern times, of which/we have any knowledge, has slain so many millions of as has this one, and the end of which, mind, is not vet.

The "Great Plague" of London, for example,. about which everyone has heard, killed at' the outside some 80,000 people in seven months-, or about as many as are dying weekly in./ India , from;,, a disease which is .identical with it in : every respect. "."""'• The "Black Death" is said to have slain one-third of the then population of England—say, 1,5000,000 persons; but this is doubtful. Even admitting, the correctness"" of,the estimate, however/ the mortality of the present epidemic in India has alredy more than doubled, this huge total.' :"";'. ''-■;'' ' .--:.. v

'What will be the.end no man can foresee or venture to forecast-. It may be that all that has gone before, and all that is happening now, inexpressibly awful though it is, is but th/prelude of worse to follow. $ . ■ ... , ~-. / -