It has often been asked, as a matter of surprize, how it happens that Bengal has never been visited by the plague. The question has been founded on the supposed affinity between that country and Egypt, in regard to the annual inundations; and to the narrowness, as well as the filth, of the streets in the great cities; which would, if the conjecture were correct, induce pestilence, as the same causes are said to do in Turkey.
The case is widely different. In Egypt, although the lands are inundated, rain is scarcely ever known to fall; the floods coming from the southerly mountains. Hence, the inhabitants are under all the disadvantages attendant upon a hot atmosphere, during eight months in the year, and are, for the remaining four, exposed to the insalubrity arising from the inundation, especially when it is draining off.
In regard to the narrowness of the streets, and the filth they contain, something may be said in alleviation. The houses in Turkey are much higher, are built of more solid materials, and the inhabitants being wholly of one religion, viz. followers of Mahomed, but partaking of some of the bad habits of the neighbouring countries, being also in a more variable climate, more pointed attention is paid to durability and to closeness in the edifices, than is commonly shewn in India. In the latter country, the utmost jealousy subsists between the Mussulmans and the Hindus, but the latter are most numerous in every place, even in the cities where Mussulman princes hold their _durbars_, or courts. This jealousy occasions the Hindus to look upon every vestige of a Mussulman as a contamination; and, as ablutions are enjoined even more by the Hindu law than by the Koran, which is the Mussulman’s book of faith, we may consider the person of a Hindu to be as clean and wholesome as repeated washings can make it. He wears only a small lock of hair, growing from a spot about the size of a dollar on the crown of his head. His cloaths are washed as often as his body, and, on the whole, it should appear almost impossible for him to carry any disease arising from, or communicated through, a deficiency of individual cleanliness.
The houses of the natives throughout India, if we except about one-third of Benares, about a twentieth of Patna, the same of Moorshadabad, and a mere trifle of the Black Town of Calcutta, are built of mats, bamboos, and straw; in the latter, they have been, under late regulations, tiled. The generality of village-huts are built with mud walls. On the whole, however, whether owing to cracks in the walls, or intervals between them and the thatches, windows, &c., the air finds a free course throughout. Add to this, that the natives do not sleep on feather beds, flock, &c., but generally on mats made of reeds. This, of itself, may be considered a preventive against infection.