Bombay Photo Images[ Mumbai]: PLAGUE EPIDEMIC IN BOMBAY ...
oldphotosbombay.blogspot.com/2010/06/plague-epidemic-in-bombay-1898-lord.html
Bombay Photo Images[ Mumbai]: ,LIFE IN FORT AND BLOGS ON ...
oldphotosbombay.blogspot.com/2011/.../bombay-mapstaxisphotoslife-in-fort-and.ht...
Bombay plague epidemic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_plague_epidemic
120 years ago, Bombay suffered but saved the world ... - PressReader
www.pressreader.com/india/the-times-of-india-mumbai-edition/.../281724089045849
2 days ago - 120 years ago, Bombay suffered but saved the world from bubonic plague ... Over a century ago, Bombay Presidency was stricken with the ...120 years ago, Bombay suffered but saved the world from bubonic plague
Over
a century ago, Bombay Presidency was stricken with the bubonic plague.
It was detected on 18th September, 1896, at Mandvi, near Masjid Bunder,
and it killed 1,900 people per week through the rest of the year.
Thousands fled, the city’s textile mills spun to a halt and makeshift
plague hospitals dotted the landscape. By the turn of the century, the
city’s population had fallen by 40,000.
But
as fatal as the epidemic was for the people of Bombay, it injected new
life into medical research. It was here that Waldemar Haffkine
discovered the plague vaccine, which helped control the epidemic, and
Paul Louis Simmond figured out that the oriental rat flea– not the rat –
was the original culprit.
More than a
century later, the cause of the epidemic is still debated by historians.
“I think the strongest theory is that it was an imported disease,” says
scholar Dr Shubha Pandya. “It came from China to Hong Kong and then to
Bombay. There were infected rats, which came in bags of grain on trading
vessels.” However, Shriti Tyagi, who led a plague walk in the city last
weekend, claimed that later research has found that the disease emerged
because of rapid industrialization and building activity, which led to
rats dying in large numbers. “Plague is caused by Yersinia pestis, an
infectious disease occurring naturally in wild rodents,” she explains.
“It is transmitted from rodent to rodent via Xenopsylla cheopsis, a flea
whose favourite blood is that of rodents followed by humans. When fleas
run short of rats, they turn to human beings.”
Today,
vestiges of the epidemic still lurk in the city’s neglected corners.
There’s a street named after Dr Accacio Gabriel Viegas, the man who
first detected the plague; Arthur Road Hospital at Chinchpokli – where
the first plague patient was admitted on September 24th – is now the
Kasturba Hospital of Infectious Diseases though a ward named after the
health officer in charge during the peak of the epidemic still exists;
and the turreted building on the JJ Hospital campus, where the vaccine
was first discovered, now houses a blood bank.
The
grandest memorial to the 1896 epidemic is the museum in Parel’s
Haffkine Institute. One section is dedicated to a variety of stuffed
rodents found in Mumbai, another to the flea, which carries the plague
bacteria in its gut; and another to a culture flask growing the bacteria
in a goat flesh broth. “Beef and pork were ruled out by Haffkine
because of religious considera- tions,” says the guide.
Haffkine,
who was born in Odessa in 1960, first came to Calcutta in 1893 to stem
the cholera epidemic by inoculating the population. When the plague
broke out in Bombay, he took over a room in Grant Medical College’s
Petit Laboratory and worked 12-14 hours to find a vaccine. It was ready
by December and he first tested it on rats, then on himself and finally
on a group of prisoners from Arthur Road Jail. Once the efficacy of the
vaccine was determi- In 2004, TOI interviewed Nancy Hafkin, the
great-granddaughter of Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian Jewish scientist,
who won acclaim by discovering the cholera and plague vaccines. Though a
trained historian, she didn’t know a lot about her ancestor’s work in
Bombay until she visited the museum. She was attending a conference in
Baramati when someone suggested she visit the institute A bacteriologist
examining rats during the Bombay plague ned, his laboratory moved to
the Aga Khan’s lodging in Mazgaon and then to the current premises in
1899.
Even as plague research was
flourishing and hospitals for different communities were being set up
across Bombay, citizens were wary of colonial medical practices, which
often involved detection committees storming into homes and violating
women’s privacy. During the walk, Tyagi recounted tales of a dead man,
who was propped up amongst a group of card players to Dr Accacio Viegas
detected the first case of bubonic plague in Bombay and brought it to
the attention of the authorities. His statue stands opposite Metro
Cinema Haffkine Institute in Parel has a museum with a section dedicated
to the 1896 Bombay plague. This exhibit shows the different kinds of
rodents that carried the bacteria, which was transmitted by a flea avoid
detection and another of a woman, who wrapped her feverish husband in a
blanket. When it was unfurled, the authorities realized that the poor
man had died of suffocation, not plague.
Ahost
of native remedies also became popular at the time including an
ointment called marham-e-almas, hawked by a hakim in Bhendi Bazaar, and
Sister McCollough’s Fizz, a vile mix of soda with bismuth, mucilage and
hydrocyanic acid. The building where Waldemar Haffkine discovered the
plague vaccine with the help of one clerk and three assistants
By
the early1900s, the epidemic had run its course in Bombay – thanks
partly to better sanitation –and the city began to stagger back to
normalcy. But even today, there are still outbreaks. In July this year,
a10-year-old boy contracted the disease in Russia; and in 2014, the
World Health Organization reported an outbreak of plague in Madagascar,
which resulted in 40 deaths. Today, the vaccine isn’t commercially
available and the treatment of choice is antibiotics.
Bubonic Plague in Bombay, 1896 - International Institute for Asian ...
iias.asia/iiasn/25/regions/25SA1.html
The chilling discovery: when the plague came to Bombay in 1896
scroll.in/article/.../the-chilling-discovery-when-the-plague-came-to-bombay-in-1896
The Bombay Plague Walk at Mumbai - Events High
www.eventshigh.com › Mumbai › Arts & culture › The Bombay Plague Walk
This is the last of Seven Bungalows - Mid-Day and plague
archive.mid-day.com › News
Bandra refuses to lower its crosses - Times of India
timesofindia.indiatimes.com › City
Catholics say BMC wants to demolish 38 crosses ... - Mumbai Mirror
www.mumbaimirror.com › Mumbai
BOMBAY PLAGUE PHOTOS FROM GOOGLE SEARCH-CLICK ON EACH PHOTO TO GET MORE INFORMATION
