02884nas a2200169   4500000000100000008004100001260005300042653003700095653001600132653002000148653002600168653002600194100001400220245016700234520228800401022002502689       2026                            d  c07/2026bSpringer Science and Business Media LLC10aSocial and environmental context10aColonialism10ahigh-endemicity10aEpidemiologic Studies10aHistory, 18th Century1 aMahato NK00aColonial environmental change, socio-economic disruption, and the high endemicity of leprosy in South-West Bengal, 1870s-1940s: A historical epidemiological study3 a<p>This study intends to understand the high endemicity of leprosy in South-west Bengal by linking the environmental change and disease incidence through a relational framework and socio-economic context. Since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European scholars have studied the link between climate and disease incidence and its adverse consequences on the local population in the tropical context. The medical enquiry on the climate and topography lent an important idea that came to be regarded as pathogenic Bengal. The map prepared in 1893 by Sir Leonard Rogers shows very intimate connections between high rainfall and temperature and leprosy. The high rate of disease prevailed in the areas of the high southwest monsoon. The high rainfall region shows a high incidence of leprosy with an area of leprosy rate of 0.5 per mile. In South- West Bengal, Bankura, Birbhum, Burdwan and Manbhum possessed the highest rate of leprosy in India. Due to high rainfall, as the Meteorological Map shows, this area is very hot and humid. Leprosy, an infectious disease became an endemic phenomenon when all other attending conditions such as poverty, famines and precarious living states lead to a special disposition towards a disease besides the contagium bacteria. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, western and central districts of Bengal were considered healthier but suddenly became unhealthy in the 1830s. The British agrarian expansion at the cost of forest land in the nineteenth century changed the land use pattern. The sustainable economy of the tribal people was damaged and the forested districts became at risk of famine. After 1866, repeated famines occurred in the years of 1874,1892,1897,1903, 1904–5, 1906–7 and during the period of World War II. The construction projects such as roads, railways, canals, and coal mining had a devastating impact on the ecology of the region- such as stagnant water, soil degradation and salinization caused by irrigation and railway embankment. The crowded settlements of migrant poor labour in and around the coalfields made it possible to spread the disease vectors and helped the diffusion of the diseases. This study has taken into account of medical, census data and climate data in qualitative methods.</p>
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