Kathmandu in the time
of cholera
British resident recalls the cholera epidemic
that killed thousands in Kathmandu Valley in 1885
Tom
RobertsonMarch 21, 2020
Kathmandu in the 1880s was a small place, about
1.5 km across and with 50,000 people living in its dense core area.
In-migration after 1768 and new Rana palaces after 1846 had started expanding
the city. Sanitation was
poor, and conditions in Kathmandu were ripe for another disease outbreak.
The doctor at the British Residency in
Lainchaur, G H Gimlette, did not pull punches in describing Kathmandu’s poor
hygenic conditions: ‘The filth of the city is indescribable; along each side of
the narrow lanes and streets run deep gutters, a foot to eighteen inches wide,
filled with a stagnant mass of black stinking mud, into which fecal matter and
every sort of refuse find their way. The stench of the thoroughfares is at all
times bad enough, but, on a warm morning in the rains, it becomes sickening.
(The houses) are generally overcrowded and ill-ventilated.’
Cholera had struck before — in 1823, 1831, 1843, 1856,
1862, 1867, 1872, 1874, and 1875. The 1856 and 1872 outbreaks killed large
numbers. In 1872, 200 to 250 people perished each day.
The dreaded disease which brought on dysentery
and vomiting killed half of those who got it. People were just beginning to
understand how to contain outbreaks. Health knowledge was needed, but also
smart, concerted government action. Kathmandu had little of either.
The city strained to feed itself. ‘Every scrap
of available ground in the valley of Nepal is cultivated to exhaustion,’ an
1880s visitor noted, ‘to yield its utmost to support a population already too
large for its limited area.’
The most common ailments at the time
were typhoid fever
chronic dyspepsia, goitre, and syphilis. With syphilis, the chronicler noted,
it was ‘rather the rule than the exception for a man to be infected at some
period of his life’.
In 1885 Nepal had seen lots of rain and
extremely hot weather. The city’s ‘sultry and oppressive’ air, Gimlette noted,
‘was undisturbed by the slightest breeze’.
The first ugly symptoms of cholera manifested
themselves in mid May. Soon, five or six people were dying each day. By the end
of May 10-12 people were dying. The British doctor tried to spur the palace
into action, making ‘frequent and urgent’ calls for temporary clinics to treat
the sick. But his pleas went ‘entirely disregarded’ by the Rana rulers at the
time.
Eventually the government gave a space for a
small dispensary, but that fell far short of the what Gimlette really wanted —
a ‘place into which patients could be admitted and treated continuously’.
Another poor decision added fuel to the fire.
Over 15,000 troops were gathered in Kathmandu for a possible deployment in
India. Some soldiers got sick, and others were not dispatched home immediately.
Only after a colorful parade two weeks later on 1 June 1885 were soldiers sent
home. But it was too late.
The disease followed them around the country.
Kathmandu saw ‘a sudden increase’ in cases, the death rate now topping 50 per
day. Cases appeared in Patan and then Bhaktapur. Cholera spread
into the mountains.
Meanwhile, the troops at the British Residency
remained healthy, despite cases nearby. Gimlette credited good hygiene and a
limited quarantine — soldiers were not allowed into the city, then a slight
distance away.
By 14 June, cholera had invaded the palace. Of
the over 300 people who lived there, 25 were dead by evening, chiefly
slave-girls and servants.
‘A panic ensued, and the Durbar was quickly
emptied,’ Gimlette wrote. The dying were rushed to Pashupati. Others fled to
the palaces of Patan and Bhaktapur which themselves soon grew into ‘fresh
centres of the disease’.
On June 29th, after alternating days of heavy
rain and high temperatures, the daily death toll climbed over 100, its highest
yet, and stayed there for several days. Gimlette made house calls, and visited
the ghats daily. He observed a society struggling to maintain its humanity.
He described the cremation ghats as ‘crowded
with sick, dying, and dead. Many unfortunate wretches were simply, when
attacked, brought to the edge of stream and there abandoned’.
The scene was gruesome. The better off could
afford to burn their dead, but ‘the bodies of the poor and low castes were
thrown into the middle of the shallow stream by hundreds, to be pulled again
piecemeal to the banks by the dogs, jackals, and vultures, who feasted on
them’.
Cooler temperatures in July gave the city a
short respite. But the disease soon roared back ‘as bad as ever’. This time it
devastated the city’s lower quarters. Only in August did the death rate
significantly drop, the outbreak finally coming to an end in early September.
Over 9,000 people in Kathmandu Valley had
died, the Darbar announced. Gimlette thought this estimate high, but agreed
that the loss of life ‘must have been very great’. The city’s population,
before the outbreak, was approximately 50,000.
G H Gimlette worried that poor hygiene and
government indifference would yield yet more killer epidemics. ‘The
disgustingly insanitary condition of Katmandu and other towns,’ he wrote, ‘is
quite certain to breed epidemics in future. No efforts to remedy it are in the
least likely to be made by the Durbar, nor would anything much short of burning
the city to the ground suffice. The foundations are saturated with filth, and
the air is almost thick with stenches.’
