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Plague in Further India
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2009
Extract
Further India has been affected by plague to a small extent in comparison to the Indian Empire. Some considerable interest therefore attaches to the comparatively unimportant local outbreaks which occur, from time to time, in the Malay Peninsula. It is generally very difficult to explain the reason for their limitation and to determine, with any degree of accuracy, the source of the infection. Kelanthan, a small but populous and fairly healthy Native Malay State, situated in geographical position between 4° 45′ and 6° 25′ lat. N., and 101° 30′ and 102° 40′ long. E., has only been exploited by European enterprise during the last seven or eight years. The State seems hitherto to have escaped from plague. The Kelantan Malays in fact, so late as 1905, looked upon plague as a new disease and, for want of a better name, then referred to it as the “penyakit leher” or “neck sickness.” Numerous deaths from this so-called “neck sickness” were reported by the natives of the interior to have occurred at some remote villages in the month of May 1905. The illness appeared from the clinical descriptions given by the Malays at the time to have been bubonic plague. It was not thought necessary however by the Kelantan Government to take any special precautions to prevent its spread, and the disease disappeared of its own accord in a few months' time.
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