Jail, in Bombay, when the epidemic reached that establishment. From
the first day after the inoculation till the end of the outbreak there
were in the jail twelve cases and six deaths among one hundred and
seventy-two uninoculated inmates, and two cases, with no deaths, among
one hundred and forty-seven inoculated. A year later, almost exactly
a similar result was observed when the plague attacked the so-called
Umarkhadi Common Jail, in Bombay. In this case after the inoculation
there were ten cases and six deaths among one hundred and twenty-seven
uninoculated inmates, and three cases, with no deaths, among one
hundred and forty-seven inoculated. These and other observations show
that the vaccine for the plague begins to exercise its effect within
some twenty-four hours after inoculation; that it is useful even in
the case of persons already infected; that it is therefore applicable
at any stage of an epidemic. Numerous further observations were soon
collected on the working of the system.
At the small village of Uudhera, of the Baroda feudatory state, where
plague broke out, inoculation was applied to a half of each family, the
other half remaining uninoculated. After that there were twenty-seven
cases and twenty-six deaths among sixty-four uninoculated, and eight
cases, with three deaths, among seventy-one inoculated of the same
households, the proportionate difference in mortality being over
eighty-nine per cent. There followed observations on a far larger
scale, demonstrating that the mortality of the inoculated, compared
to that of the non-inoculated, was on an average between eighty and
ninety per cent less. Sometimes this reduction reached ninety per cent.
In the Punjaub, in a village called Bunga, there occurred, in two
hundred and eighty-one not inoculated, ninety-seven cases of plague and
sixty-five deaths, while among seventy-four inoculated there were six
cases, but no deaths. In Bangalore, among 80,285 of the inhabitants not
inoculated, there were 2,208 deaths from plague, while among 23,537
inoculated there were only 108. The observations at Lanowli, Kirkee,
Daman, Hubli, Dharwar, Gadag, in the Bombay Presidency, gave the same
results. At Hubli over forty-two thousand inhabitants out of some
fifty thousand were inoculated. In Bombay city, out of a population
of 821,764, 157,256 have now undergone the inoculation. The work
proceeds here at present at the rate of one thousand to eleven hundred
inoculations a day.
From plague hospitals the returns show that among those of the attacked
who were previously inoculated the mortality is reduced to less than
one half of that among patients who were not inoculated. The property
of reducing the case mortality thus appears to belong to the plague
prophylactic in an unmistakable degree.
* * * * *
By the anti-cholera and anti-plague inoculation the methods of
preventive treatment by means of cultivated bacteria and their products
have been rendered, so to say, a part of the daily policy in human
medicine. The usefulness and practicability of those methods have
become clearly apparent, and steps have been taken to extend further
the field of their application. On the ground of the experiments
made with the typhoid bacillus in the Pasteur Institute in 1889-’93,
and of the results obtained from the anti-cholera inoculation in
India, I was able to induce Professor Wright, of the Pathological
Laboratory in Netley, whom I initiated in 1892 in the principles and
technique of anti-cholera inoculation, to start a campaign of similar
operations against typhoid among the British troops. The latter are
stationed at different times of their service very nearly in all parts
of the world, and yearly pay a very heavy tribute to that disease.
The medical officers in charge of these troops pass through a course
of training at Netley, and Professor Wright had rendered excellent
services in connection with the cholera inoculations, by disseminating
the knowledge of them among the probationers of the school. It seemed
to me expedient, therefore, to start the typhoid inoculation also
through the staff and pupils of that school. The following plan as
to the preparation of the vaccine, and the way of carrying out the
inoculation, was laid before Professor Wright. The typhoid bacillus
was to be brought to a fixed stage of virulence by the inoculation in
the peritoneal cavity of Guinea pigs, according to the exact rules
prescribed for the anti-cholera inoculation. Once the virus was fixed,
it was to be cultivated for twenty-four hours on a solid medium, and
a first vaccine prepared by carbolizing that virus. As, however, the
durability of the effect of carbolized vaccine alone was not known,
this was to be followed up by the injection of a dose of the fixed
living virus.
The inoculation was first to be made on volunteers among the physicians
on probation at Netley; then on volunteers among the young officers of
the army on the eve of their departure for the tropics; and then, with
the approval of the military authorities, on volunteers among private
soldiers. At the end of 1895, during my visit to England, I obtained
from Sir William Mackinnon, then Director-General of the Army Medical
Department, permission for Professor Wright to start the work upon the
plan above detailed; and the first inoculations, in the way described
above, were done in the middle of 1896. Soon after that, Pfeiffer
and Kolle, recognizing the same similarity between the cholera and
typhoid microbes, and pointing out that the results obtained by us in
India were likely to be repeated when applying the method to typhoid,
proposed and started a similar series of inoculations.
When the inoculation against plague was begun, and observation showed
that dead vaccines alone were apparently sufficient to produce
satisfactory results, a second inoculation with living virus appeared
less urgently necessary; and as the effect of such an inoculation,
which Professor Wright very courageously tried first on himself,
seemed troublesome, it was decided to do for the time being the second
inoculation also with the carbolized virus. Similarly, the plan which
was adopted for the plague inoculation, of cultivating the vaccine
in a liquid, instead of a solid medium, and of using cultures of
several weeks’ duration, has been subsequently adopted in the typhoid
inoculation also.
Many thousands of British soldiers and civilians have already undergone
the inoculation in question. The latter was done partly with vaccines
cultivated on a solid medium, according to the older plan, and
partly with vaccines prepared according to the plague inoculation
method. The results so far observed are encouraging, and, I hope,
will shortly be improved considerably. At the last Harveian dinner in
London, Surgeon-General Jameson, Director-General of the Army Medical
Department, summarized the results of the observations in India, where,
among several thousands of young soldiers, the most prone to the
disease, the incidence of typhoid since their inoculation was 0.7 per
mille, while among the older, more resistant, not inoculated soldiers,
the incidence was during the same period just double that. A large
proportion of the force now on service in the South African campaign
have been inoculated, some before embarking and others on their way out.
* * * * *
Such is the position of preventive inoculation, as applied, so far, to
human communities. The very success of these operations is now apt to
create some sort of feigned or earnest alarm, and one meets at present
with the question, What is going to happen to our poor body if we
are to be inoculated against _all_ diseases? and with this other one,
How do you expect us to make a _living_ if you try to keep all of us
alive? The humorous form of these questions usually permits of their
dropping out of the conversation without a reply. The earnest answers
are, however, obvious. The efforts of the bacteriologists in combating
diseases are at present directed to a twofold aim: their prevention, by
a prophylactic treatment, and their cure. The advantage of a curative
treatment is that it is to be applied to a relatively small number of
persons, to those who actually fall victims to an attack; while that
of the preventive treatment is in the greater certainty with which
safety and protection are secured by it. The relative position of the
two treatments will, in practice, differ in different diseases--namely,
according to the prevalence and fatality of a given disease, and
according to the merits of the two treatments as they stand at the
time. In diseases in which the risks of being attacked are smaller,
or the consequences of an attack less serious, or for which a very
effective and sure curative treatment has been discovered, the majority
of people will prefer to wait for an actual attack rather than to
undergo the discomfort of a preventive treatment; in diseases, on the
contrary, in which the chances of being attacked are great, or in which
the fatality is higher, the sequelæ of an attack more serious, and for
which a successful and not very troublesome preventive treatment has
been found, large numbers will undergo preventive inoculation. But,
even in the latter case, a mutual co-operation between the two methods
will exist always, as there will always be a number of people, either
among those who have neglected to protect themselves by inoculation,
or among those in whom the inoculation has proved unsuccessful, who
will fall victims to an attack and require the benefits of a curative
treatment, be those at the time little or great.
The answer to the second question is of course to be expected rather
from the politico-economist, the wise administrator, the civilian, than
from the bacteriologist. In any case it is clear already that if we
are ever to be told that we must thin our ranks, we shall prefer not
to leave the task in the hands of the indiscriminating microbe, but to
have some voice in the matter ourselves. Inoculation marks only the
conquest of another force which henceforth we shall be glad to control.
BOMBAY, INDIA, _March, 1900_.
COLONIES AND THE MOTHER COUNTRY. (II.)
BY JAMES COLLIER.
The growth of the relations between a colony and the mother country
closely follows the development of the relationship between an
organism and its offspring, or (in higher species) between parents and
children. When an infusorian subdivides into two cells, the new cell
produced swims away and henceforth leads an independent life. Most
of the Phœnician and most of the earlier Greek colonies were social
infusoria which parted from the parent organism by segmentation and
had no further relations with it. As we rise in the animal scale a
new relationship, that between mother and young, and a new instinct,
the maternal, come into existence. These begin as low down as the
mollusks, and expand and heighten, though not without strange lapses,
in both insects and birds as species develope; but we need not trace
the evolution here. Let it suffice to note that there are successive
degrees of specialization; a site is chosen suitable for depositing and
hatching eggs; means are found for making them secure; a shelter is
built for them; they are deposited near substances adapted to nourish
the young; special food is prepared for them; they are reared through
food disgorged or brought to them. The accession of the male to the
family marks the dawn of the paternal instinct; it appears earliest
among fishes. This evolution is repeated in the history of colonies,
where, however, the maternal and paternal offices melt into one another
insensibly.
The mother country founds and nurtures colonies. Most of the earliest
colonies are the work of adventurous bands or navigating merchants
or fishermen, who seek their own habitats, carry with them their own
equipment and fight their own battles. Then the metropolis settles its
surplus or discontented citizens in territories previously chosen,
provides them with all that is necessary for their start, and often
nourishes them during the infancy of the colony. Hispaniola was a state
colony manned with miners and artisans who were provided with tools,
and this at the cost of a loan and a draught from the confiscated
property of the Jews. Nor was it until gold began to be found in large
quantities that the receipts equalled the expenditure on the young
colony. Louisiana was founded and fostered with a royal munificence
that conferred on it “more than was contributed by all the English
monarchs together for the twelve English colonies on the Atlantic.”
Georgia was a one-man foundation, but the British Parliament twice
granted considerable sums to initiate it and carry it on; the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel aided, and the benevolence of
philanthropic England contributed largely to its success. Not till
1818--more than half a century after the conquest--did the revenue
of Canada balance its expenditure. The convict colony of New South
Wales was, of course, entirely of state origin. Stores of every kind,
together with cattle and seeds, were sent out at the beginning, and
long continued to be sent out to it. The first governor was granted
a space of two years to make it self-supporting, but the growth of
a convict colony is abnormally slow, and the civil and military
establishments for thirty-four years continued to be a drain on the
British exchequer to the extent of over ten millions. Even now one of
the oldest and best of existing British colonies, with an area of over
three hundred thousand square miles, does not produce the breadstuffs
needed for its own consumption. The Cape of Good Hope, of mixed Dutch
and French origin, was first made a truly British colony by the
dispatch of six thousand emigrants at the cost of the mother country--a
cost much greater than was anticipated. When the Transvaal was forcibly
annexed by England, the stepmother country advanced a sum of £90,000
to rescue the quondam republic from its financial difficulties. In
1895 Parliament voted three millions for the building of a railroad in
British East Africa. Uganda is supported by a British subsidy. Algeria
is a manufactured colony, which has all along had to be supported
by its creator. Apart from the cost of their civil and military
establishments, France has to subsidize her colonies to the extent of
over four millions sterling, partially expended in reproductive public
works. Even tiny New Caledonia costs France half a million, one half of
which, it is true, is expended on the convict establishment.
Most colonies at their beginning are burdensome to the mother country.
Years after its foundation South Australia fell into such embarrassment
that its governors had to draw on the imperial exchequer for nearly a
million. In 1834 the expenditure in Cape Colony was still in excess of
the revenue. Sierra Leone had to be aided by a parliamentary grant year
after year. No wonder the Colonial Office complained that colonies were
expensive to keep up. In German Africa the revenue does not meet the
expenditure. The Congo Free State does not pay its way. On the other
hand, Congo Française has a substantial surplus. Western Australia was
another exception to the rule. There the Imperial Government announced
that it would contribute nothing to the foundation of the colony,
which was to be self-supporting from the first. Private capitalists
were to arrange for the emigration of ten thousand persons in four
years. Lands were granted to the emigrants on a scale of extravagance
which long hampered the progress of the colony. Companies likewise
expend large sums in many colonies. French and English companies
embarked on American, Indian, African and island adventures at ruinous
loss. Law’s company withdrew from Louisiana, the New Zealand Company
from New Zealand, and the Canterbury Association from Canterbury
with a balance on the wrong side of the account. Wealthy individuals
bear their part. Mr. Rhodes annually subsidizes the British Central
African Protectorate, and King Leopold the Congo Free State. Colonial
bishoprics have also been endowed and colonial cathedrals built,
largely with the aid of voluntary contributions by sympathizers in the
mother country.
The mother state sometimes gives the colonies the benefit of her
financial good name. In 1869 England withdrew her regiments from
New Zealand when the colony was still at war with the Maoris, and
to salve the wounded feelings of the colonists she agreed (under
pressure) to guarantee a loan of a million in aid of emigration and
public works. Before the Canadian Pacific Railway could be completed
the Imperial Government had to guarantee a loan of £3,600,000. Mr.
Rhodes proposes (unsuccessfully, it now appears) that the Imperial
Government, which contributed £200,000 to the cost of a railway from
Kimberley to Buluwayo, should guarantee a loan of an enormous amount
for the continuation of the African trunk railway from Buluwayo to Lake
Tanganyika.
The mother country supports or aids its self-governing colonies through
its capitalists. In order to execute public works--roads, bridges and
railways--to assist immigration, to build fortresses, and sometimes
to pay the interest on previous loans, all the colonies have habitual
recourse to the British Stock Exchange. There are good reasons for
this. The colonies have little capital of their own, for all their
money has been used up from day to day. The English investor has
an almost unlimited amount--the savings mainly of one industrious
century--and he is prepared to lend it at a lower rate of interest than
would content the colonial capitalist. Of over two thousand millions
sterling which John Bull has out at usury all over the world, the total
public and private indebtedness of the seven Australasian colonies
alone, with a population of four millions, is stated to exceed three
hundred and twenty millions, or at the rate of eighty pounds per head
of these daring colonists. One half of this sum is due from colonial
governments for the purposes already named. The half of it, due from
banks, building companies, mercantile associations and mortgage
agencies, excites no misgivings; these institutions can always go
bankrupt, as many of them did in the financial collapse of 1891-’93.
But it is not open to a British colony to file its schedules, or at
least so we used to think; and so the Times said till the oldest of
British colonies went bankrupt the other day. At all events, it is
harder, and we contemplate this enormous pile of public indebtedness
in young and scantily peopled communities with the same feelings as
made alarmists foresee impending ruin in the growing augmentation
of the gigantic public debt of the United Kingdom. It is commonly
said that while the imperial debt has been accumulated as the cost
of “just and necessary wars,” or of wars that were neither just nor
necessary, the colonial debt has been contracted for the execution of
reproductive public works. This is not altogether so. Eleven million
pounds of the public debt of New Zealand were contracted to carry on
war with the Maoris, who were defending their territory. The Seven
Years’ War, which was begun on the part of England to gain possession
of the Ohio Valley and thus increase the extent of her colonies,
doubled her public debt. Where is the difference between the two
classes of expenditure? Then most of the self-governing colonies have
expended large sums in fortifying ports, some in partly supporting
a fleet, and one at least in purchasing war ships of its own. Nor
has all the remainder been reproductively expended. The building of
schools is a wise way of spending money, one’s own or another’s, but
it can not be called a materially reproductive way. Governors’ and
ministerial residences, parliamentary and departmental buildings, are
indispensable, but they can not be called ‘assets,’ especially if built
of perishable and inflammable timber. Even railways, most profitable of
public works, are not always true assets. In many of the colonies they
are light railways, and when traffic increases and a higher speed is
required they will have to be built over again and new rolling stock
procured. Not a few of them, too, are ‘political railways,’ running
through a sparsely populated country no-whither, and built to capture
votes. Roads are only less valuable, but they were made (sometimes by
graduates and men of scientific antecedents who were afterward cabinet
ministers) at the wage rate of from two guineas to four pounds ten per
week, and are an inadequate return on the outlay. Last century British
loans were issued as prizes to friends of ministers, and a much reduced
amount found its way to the treasury. Deduct an analogous, though
not quite similar, item of waste in colonial loans, add this to all
the other non-reproductive elements, and the genuinely reproductive
proportion will shrink considerably. Every one of the colonies, even
with the fee simple of territories only less than Europe in extent in
their hands, would have sunk under the increasing burden. Happily or
not, the ever-growing wealth of England has so cheapened money that the
interest charge on the whole Australasian indebtedness sank in five
years (1890-’96), mainly through conversion of loans, from fourteen
millions to twelve and a quarter. It may be added that the colonies
which have borrowed most recklessly have not been the most populous or
those with largest resources, but rather the socialistic colonies with
big schemes on hand.
A father may assist his son by supplying him with the capital needed to
carry on his business. Thus it is entirely with the mother country’s
money that the first colonial banks are founded. As the colony grows
wealthier and the business of the banks extends, colonial shareholders
purchase stock in it, but the number of British shareholders remains
considerable. A typical example is that of the Bank of New Zealand,
from two fifths to one half of whose shares are (or in 1888 were)
held in the United Kingdom. In the older or wealthier colonies of New
South Wales and Victoria the number of English shareholders may be
smaller, though still large. A still larger proportion of the shares
of the great colonial steamship companies, amounting possibly to three
fourths or nine tenths of the whole, is held (chiefly by commercial
men and firms) in Great Britain. Many commercial undertakings in all
the colonies are engineered entirely by English capital (not included
in the two thousand millions). The Canadian transcontinental railway;
railways, electric tramway lines and silver mines in Tasmania; the
Midland Railway and also copper mines in New Zealand; the gold mines
in Western Australia to such an extent that much more English capital
is said to pour into that colony than gold flows out of it--are only
a few colonial enterprises that would never have been undertaken but
for the mother country’s aid. Some of these are lucrative, others
not; some have been abandoned, and others belong to a still darker
class. “Uncounted millions of capital have been raised in the central
money market of London, only to be fooled away in ill-conceived and
misdirected enterprises abroad,” says Lord Brassey. Nor are the losses
confined to questionable undertakings. Two great Australasian banks
have frittered away their entire capital of four and three millions,
respectively, and it may be assumed that the British investor has
borne one half of the losses. Of half a dozen smaller colonial banks
a similar tale might be told. Father and son have to share in one
another’s adversity, as in one another’s prosperity.